27: How To Win Friends and Rescue People
by Math Girl
Summary: In the aftermath of a barely-repelled invasion, IR begins to take shape. Alternate universe. Completed!
1. 1: Upstart

Hi, there. :)

**27: How To Win Friends and Rescue People**

1: Upstart

_Kanaho, of a bright, lovely tropic afternoon-_

Five young men sat round an ornate wrought-iron table, partly shaded by its rakishly tilting umbrella. Above them, the umbrella's floral cloth rustled and snapped, stirred by a wind which had hurried, panting hard, from the sea. The ocean itself could be heard and smelt, but not seen. There were too many hedges, trees and walls in the way for plain line-of-sight; but nothing held back that distant thundering noise, or the wet and salt-heavy air.

Closer to, one could detect chlorine, sun-block, and the yeasty aroma of beer. Sunshine glowed from stucco'd walls, splintered off rippling pool water, warmed the terra-cotta tiled floor. It reflected, as well, off of mirrored sunglass panes and the green, curving surface of the young men's bottles. Flowers and vines and palm fronds nodded agreement with the wind, while colored birds like spilled candy darted and flashed overhead.

Not everyone nursed a beer, of course. Alan, the blond youngest, was well content with a Sprite (_And_ with keeping his shoulders back and gut in, attempting to seem as confident and strong as the rest. But anyways, in his view, beer tasted nasty. Just saying, is all…).

Scott dominated the conversation, as usual; Scott and Virgil, with sometimes John tossing comments in the air like slim daggers, to watch them spin and then catch them, again. But he never had talked much.

Scott leaned forward a little: Mister Mirrored-sunglasses-muscular-Air Force-Recruitment-Poster Guy. Gesturing dismissively with one hand (his mother's old habit, not Jeff's) the pilot said,

"Yeah, but… _'Rescue International'?_ It just sounds funny, Virge. Backward, if you know what I mean."

He had Indian-black hair (very straight) and extremely blue eyes that no one could see behind military-issue sunglasses. He wore tan shorts and leather deck shoes, like most of the others, but no shirt.

Virgil shook his head, digging both figurative heels in for a long fight. His wavy brown hair was not so dark as Scott's, and his eyes were not blue, but warm brown. Of all the five brothers, in fact, Virgil most resembled their dad.

"I think it sounds more sophisticated, that way," he insisted stubbornly. "Besides… it puts what we plan to be doing _first, _instead of just in there, somewhere_._ John…? Help me out, here. What d'_you_ think?"

John was a lanky young man. An astronaut (more or less) who tended to overflow chairs and bump his head a lot on low doorways. Like Alan, he was extremely blond; in a sun-bleached, driftwood sort of way. But his eyes were like Scott's: gem-quality blue-violet. In age he'd occurred between Scott and Virgil, and well before Gordon. Not that John pushed that whole "second in charge" thing, much. Having just returned from Mars, normal gravity and wet, heavy air were something of a trial for him. Sooner or later, he was sure to adjust. Now, though, John shrugged his thin, peeling shoulders and said,

"Whatever. Calling a T-rex 'Fluffy' doesn't get a bridle and saddle on, Virgil. All we've got so far is one… what did you call it…? Thunderbird? Yeah. 'Within-a-hundred-mile-radius Rescue' might be more accurate."

Virgil leaned over to give his newly returned brother an affable, one-armed shove. He'd have toppled him from the chair, had John not twisted quickly aside.

"You're a real ray of sunshine, Johnny. Y'know that?"

The astronaut smiled indifferently.

"I do my humble best," he said, turning his attention back to beer (which Mars had desperately lacked).

"Actually," cut in Gordon (the only one present more sunburnt than John), "It seems clear that what we're best advised t' do is begin modestly, with no fanfare, as such. A few rescues at a time, under deep cover, while Brains stamps out assorted new 'Birds, and then _gradually_ we increase our range. Dead simple, really."

Sitting, Gordon Tracy gave the impression of being taller than he actually was, owing to a great deal of Olympics-forged muscle. He was spectacularly red-haired and thick as a brick, sometimes, but one had to make allowances for inhaled chlorine, repeated concussions and Skydiver launch-trauma. (Not to mention Alan's unfortunate influence.) Sunlight spattered from his coppery hair like the brandy-flare on a Christmas pudding, as Gordon turned to nudge his fidgety younger brother.

"Not heard from everyone, yet, have we? Alan, care t' put in your bit?"

The youngster grinned wickedly.

"Sure thing, bro, thanks for asking. The basic facts are these: long as I get to fly something… or drive it… nobody cares what it's called. International Rescue… Rescue International… who gives a flip? Dude, just pick a name and get started!"

John cocked his head to one side slightly, but you had to be very fine-tuned for gesture, to notice the movement. Producing a quarter from his pocket (below the long-sleeved black tee-shirt) he said,

"Okay. _'_Flip' it is. Heads, IR… tails, RI. Virgil, call it in the air."

Iron chair legs scraped across tile as five alert and curious young men shifted round the table for a better glimpse at their future. John balanced the quarter just so on one thumb, and then flipped it heavenward. Glittering like his gold wedding band and silver-blond hair, the coin rose, peaked, and began to descend.

"Tails!" Virgil called out, leaning forward intently. John fielded the quarter just above table-top level, bringing his hand up and around, then slapping the coin on the back of his right arm. (Theoretically ambidextrous, he _did_ tend to favor his left.)

"Scott," he said, preparing to move his hand and reveal the choice, "Will you do the honors?"

"Sure. Let her rip, little brother."

With his usual lack of embellishment, John uncovered the quarter.

"Heads!" Scott announced, flashing a quick, triumphant smile. "IR wins the toss. Read it and weep."

Well, Virgil Tracy didn't weep (settling back into his chair and reaching for another beer) but he did sigh.

"What else do we need besides a big-ass cargo carrier?" he asked, twisting the cap from his bottle. "For facing different rescue scenarios, I mean."

Scott considered a moment. Then,

"Isn't that Hackenbacker's department? And dad's?"

"Maybe so, but since we're the ones gonna be handling all this equipment out in the field… with, like John says, not enough 'Birds… it kind of makes sense to figure out what we need ahead of time, and put our two cents in. Am I right?"

He glanced sideways at John, who had mostly tuned out again to attempt balancing his quarter edgewise on the bumpy glass tabletop.

"Works for me," John replied, not looking up. "I suggest spacecraft. Something fast and long-range… with an orbital docking station."

"Submarines," said Gordon, jarring the table with a sudden, eager movement. The coin clattered onto its side again. But John, like Sisyphus, was a patient man. Certain dimly-recalled events had given him a definite sense of perspective. Gordon, too, soldiered on.

"At least _one,_ that is t' say. F'r undersea rescues and suchlike."

"And something that could dig straight to the core! With a ray-gun, for battling zombies!" countered Alan.

"Right. Meanwhile… back in the real world," said Scott, reclaiming his brothers' straying attention, "we'll need a way to put someone on the spot in a hurry. Back when the amphitheatre came apart… Wow. Remember when we thought it was just a bunch of damn terrorists? Anyway, I noticed at the time that it took awhile for dad to reach and consolidate the available resources. How about a… a sort of on-site mobile command center?"

Made sense, and everyone said so, but Virgil was concerned about another matter, entirely.

"What about aliens, Scott? I almost got killed under that amphitheatre, when a Mysteron seized the shield generator and practically brought down the tunnel. Can we defend our systems against possession? Because having planes and equipment turn on us in the middle of a rescue would pretty much un-save the day."

"And Father Arnold's more of a businessman than an exorcist," said John, putting his quarter away. "But that's okay. I've randomized the anti-viral code. It'll keep mutating faster than they can respond… hopefully. Just a matter of staying on top of the situation and preventing selection pressure from evolving a better, faster Mysteron. That would be bad."

"But you'd be famous," Virgil kidded. "They'd name the new species… let's see… _'Mysteroni Johnii' _or something like that."

"Pass," said his ice-blond brother, just about the same time that their father roared:

"BOYS!"

Jeff's echoing bellow originated from _outside_ the house, because there was not _one_ sleeping baby in there, but two; small Kara Jane, and Richard Grant Tracy, their new brother.


	2. 2: Keeping Score

Thanks Tikatu, ED, Mitzy, Sam1 and Boomercat. :)

**2: Keeping Score**

_Tracy Island, on that same, rather perfect, afternoon-_

Scott stood up first, because he'd always been protector and spokesman (especially back in the old days). Their father hadn't sounded _angry,_ per se… just stern and very loud. Regardless, the fighter pilot got to his feet, followed by all four of his currently present brothers.

"Over here, Dad," Scott called out, looking back toward the house and upper pool deck.

Jeff Tracy appeared a few seconds later, from an unexpected direction; the ivy-twined east garden gate. His face was grim and his aspect urgent, very much like those of a man who'd got bad news, and had had to walk around for awhile, sorting things out before facing others.

John shifted restlessly at Scott's side. Then he reached across to another table (the one on which they'd rested their drink-cooler) and dragged up a sixth chair. Its legs screeched across the reddish-brown tiles like something unwilling to die. And no wonder.

Their father was nearing seventy, but he still cut an imposing figure. Very tall and broad in proportion, with a full head of iron-grey hair and direct, unflinching brown eyes. He was wealthy (the way millionaires only sigh and dream of being wealthy) and so powerful, that his recent return to the helm of Tracy Aerospace had caused a genuine stock-market surge.

Here and now, Jeff looked at them all and nodded briefly (about as friendly as he got at this hour of the day, with something weighing heavy on his mind). He was dressed in khaki trousers and a crisp white shirt. His dark sunglasses were folded up and tucked in a breast pocket, and there was a slim PDA in his hand, keeping up a continual IV drip of news and financial reports. So much for retirement, huh?

But Scott nodded back at him, and smiled.

"We were just sitting down to lunch, sir," he told is father. "Would you care to join us? Not sure what we're having, but Kyrano's the one who packed the cooler, so whatever it is will be…"

"Ornate," Virgil finished for him. John said nothing at all, having apparently found something interesting about the tabletop, again. Gordon, too, seemed rather wary. A few steps away, Alan surreptitiously hastened to remove a diamond stud from his right ear, an operation which Jeff Tracy pretended not to notice.

"Thank you," he told Scott, taking a seat on the indicated chair. "I was too busy for breakfast, this morning, so anything you've got… short of liver… will be fine."

Scott smiled at him, the flash from his aviator sunglasses nearly blinding everyone present.

"If Kyrano's packed liver, it's over between us," he joked. "And that's saying something, considering the way Cindy cooks." Then, turning slightly, "Alan, why don't you set the food out?"

_Sure. Why not. Naturally_. Just because he was, like, practically the youngest, and junk, why not enslave Alan? Give him all the crappy jobs, while everyone else gets to lounge? On the sliding scale of 'no fair', this was right up there with spending the entire summer in Kansas, or getting focus crystals and a pen-and-pencil set for Christmas. He might have complained, but…

A) Dad was there, and…

2. Gordon got up to help him, _without_ being ordered around like frickin' dang Cinderfella.

Working together, they handed everybody a fresh bottle and their choice of wrapped sandwiches. (Labeled, and ranging all the way from Scott's roast beef to Alan's tangy fish taco.) Jeff cribbed a bit from nearly everyone but Gordon, having never developed a taste for marmite and butter. Then, when crumbs and pickle spears were about all that remained (and John had found 53 separate ways to stack his disassembled sandwich parts) Jeff got down to business.

"Thank you again for lunch, boys," he said, clearing space on the table for his soul's repository, the iPhone. "Guess I was even hungrier than I thought. Dinner will be on me, sometime soon. We'll have a bonfire down on the beach, and roast whatever we can catch." It had been a very long time since the _last_ such camping trip, but Jeff still remembered.

"Boys," he continued, "There's been another assassination attempt on the world president. A bombing at her family shrine, in Tokyo. No one was seriously hurt, this time, but she came within seconds of being caught in the blast."

"Mysterons?" Scott asked, frowning at his father.

"Nobody knows. And no one's mentioned Captain Black, either… publicly, at least… but it's a worrisome definite maybe. Security's been tightened all over the damn place, and Murasaki's movements are being kept utterly secret. Decoys and everything, supposedly. WorldGov's mood is suspicious, at the moment, which may help to explain my _other_ news. I just got word from Al Jenkins that Madrid has requisitioned our financial records; personal _and_ business, to include those of you five, Tracy Aerospace and all subsidiary corporations."

"Why?" Scott demanded, startled.

Jeff's mouth thinned to a hard, angry line.

"Any number of reasons, son, up to and including a simple intent to harass me into line on the upcoming space-plane contract… but I'm betting that someone at WorldGov noticed all those extra parts and materials we've been shifting around, lately. I've tried to order on the sly… pulling things from widely spaced sources, but…" Their father spread his hands and then shrugged. "I think a few red flags have been raised with the government, anyway."

"Kid stuff," John muttered, not looking up. "Any ten-year-old with a PC can track dummy corporations, and start looking for patterns. You'd have to set up a darknet and produce the finished vehicle parts right here, in order to build anything really big without attracting attention."

Jeff studied his second son for a long moment. John sensed, but did not meet, his gaze. Aware of a delicate opportunity, Jeff chose his words carefully.

"Sounds like a good idea. Can you arrange it, son?" he asked, almost off-handedly.

John glanced up, and then away.

"Yes, sir," he said, "on the first part, anyway. Actual production would require some kind of… I dunno… massive, 3-D printing system, and that's more Hackenbacker's area than mine. He designs. I laugh. He goes back to the drawing board and comes back with something that'll actually function… with unlimited resources, a brass-lamp-and-three-wishes budget, and flexible thermodynamics. I point this out. He goes back to work again. About nine innings later, we've got a blueprint."

"Three-D printer?" Virgil inquired, looking puzzled.

"Yeah. In theory, you could use it to produce anything you wanted… if the mold-halves were shape-memory enabled, and the device could safely reach smelting temperatures. Just rough out… say… a space station hull plate design, feed the specs into your printer, then pour in the required amount of pelletized alloy, and stamp out your part."

Virgil whistled, long and low.

"Talk about brass lamps and genie wishes!" he said. "Where's the power gonna come from? A wall outlet?"

Jeff plucked at his lower lip, thinking hard.

"Just like everything else," he mused, "it's going to have to stay in-house. We'll dig down for geothermal sources and harness the waves, if we have to, but not a single, traceable watt can come from the public grid."

He looked around at them all; his five sun-spattered, puppet-stiff, mostly grown sons. Then, Jeff sighed.

"Obviously, this is going to take awhile," he said. "In light of Al Jenkins' news, I'll need to head back to the mainland, soon, and prepare for a fight. John…"

"Sir?"

"Do whatever it takes, but clean up our trail. We need to look like ushers escorting little old ladies into church, understood? _Spotless."_

A muscle twitched in John's face. He might have been going to smile, and then squelched it.

"Dad," he said, "There's always going to be waste and corruption. Thermodynamics, remember? Funds get misappropriated… pencils disappear…"

"Sod's Law," Gordon cut in, grinning ruefully. "That which _can_ go wrong, _will,_ in any human endeavour. The best one can do is try t' limit th' damage."

This time, John _did_ smile.

"Perfection's overrated, anyway. It makes people suspicious. You want to give the auditors a little something to find and shake their heads over. Then, they'll just generate data, slap your wrist and start a new witch-hunt, elsewhere."

Jeff snorted.

"John, I'm not sure whether I ought to hug you, or be disturbed that my DNA produced something that devious. Compromise."

He extended his hand. Better, after a startled instant, John shook it.

"All I can say," Jeff continued, releasing his son's hand, "is that it's a damn good thing you're on our side. _Now_…"

The CEO and former astronaut turned his attention to Scott, saying,

"Son, I know that your leave is just about up… and Gordon's, too…"

The pilot nodded, no longer stiff or apprehensive, at all.

"I'm due back at Hickam in five days, dad. I meant to leave early, though, to spend time with Cindy and catch her latest report on the Kiddy Legions of Doom." (His wife's community service was not yet completed, as school had been out when the sentence was handed down. She had a couple of months' "story time" left to serve, which he privately found funny as hell.)

"I see. Gordon?"

The athlete straightened a bit.

"I've a week's leave remainin'," he replied, saying nothing at all about 'going in early'. Not with TinTin about, at any rate. She… Well. They'd got a bit past the hand-holding stage, you see, and Gordon was not at all eager to leave.

"…After that, it's off t' Sea Base Gamma. Hopefully, they've worked out that Mako-1's no threat t' security, despite bein' sentient."

Found that out the hard way, he had, after the small fighter craft refused to dock with its launching sub. They'd got it sorted out in the end, though.

"I dunno, dude…" Alan shook his head doubtfully. "You're, like, _okay_ with flying a live airplane? The thing's probably smarter than you are, and who's saying that the Mysterons couldn't just, you know… hijack it back, or something?"

John looked at Alan. No particular expression, just a lot of focused, high-def attention.

"Won't happen," he said. "We won't let it."

There was no uncertainty, now, in John's voice or manner. He meant what he'd said. And, though he was essentially finished at NASA (albeit with public honors) his _family_ did not question John's resolve or loyalty.

Jeff shifted position in his seat, preparing to rise, and drawing everyone's attention back to himself.

"Very well. Scott, in my absence and yours, Mother is back in charge, with John and Virgil in advisory positions… and Alan, as well, when his home-schooling permits. Not to push too hard, but… for the sake of our "family business"… it would make sense for you and Gordon to wrap up your outside commitments, ASAP. If we're going to make a go of this, boys, we're going to need all hands. For my own part, I'll, um… do the best I can to limit time away from home."

His smile flickered and caught like one of those long-ago campfires.

"Advisable, anyhow, considering that your new brother's already learning to crawl. Penny wants to hire a nanny… for Janie, too… but your grandmother won't hear of it."

Reactions were various. Most of his older brothers referred to the bouncing Creighton-Ward heir (Lord Pemberton) as "sprout" or "RT", but they were a great deal more cautious when Jeff was in earshot.

"Well…" said Virgil, firing up an e-cigarette, "Look at it this way, dad: Grandma raised Scott and me…John, too, before he went away to "school". _We_ turned out pretty good, give or take a few dumb escapades. It's Gordon and Alan that keep everyone's blood-pressure up." Mostly Alan. "She'll do even better with Sp... with Richard."

Jeff smiled agreement.

"So I've told Penny, but she's got some fairly old-world notions about child rearing. Not me. Not anymore. Richard may end up being spoiled, because I mean to give him all the attention I was too busy to give _you_ five… but I'm also trying to catch up on that score. Um… if you want me to, that is."

No one quite knew how to handle his statement. Even Scott was at a complete loss for words. Virgil inhaled deeply, drawing a calming mist of nicotine, menthol and propylene glycol from his battery-powered non-cancer stick. Then he said,

"No one's been keeping score, dad. We're glad you're here. Let's leave it at that."

It ended well, lunch.


	3. 3: Remote Location

Edits forthwith. Thanks very kindly for any and all reviews. :)

**3: Remote Location**

_Tracy Island, late afternoon-_

Directly after lunch, the meeting broke up. Everyone had things to do, after all. John returned to the house by circuitous means, avoiding the company of others, but enjoying all of the incidental sights, smells and feelings associated with life on Earth. Yes, he was still somewhat low-grav adapted and had to pause often for rest. That's why there were benches and hammocks, though, and (hell, why not…) fallen trees.

It was just that, compared to Mars, there was so much teeming, fountaining _life_ here. Flowers, animals… things of every description; sprouting all over the damn place for no other reason than that they _could._ On Mars, even with its newly-formed atmosphere, its oceans, and revitalized core, there was far less to see. Rolling, tundra-like vistas of tan and purple vegetation, a few stalking reptile-birds and primitive, slinking mammals. Well, those and the living machines… but John's thoughts swerved immediately away. Rather than consider the abandoned rovers and power suit, he got up once more and resumed walking.

Dr. Bennett had said, _"People do stupid and violent things when they're scared, John."_

…And Earth had been terrified shitless.

His pace picked up. John was breathing hard by the time he reached the west side of the house, with its service entrance and mix of good smells. Someone was cooking, and laundry was being done, filling the air with the pleasant scent of foodstuffs and strong, floral detergent. People called out and answered one another. He could have stood quietly observing their by-play for hours, except that he had work to do and commitments to meet.

So, John moved along, nodding at the servants and allowing TinTin to kiss his cheek. She smelled nice, and her brushing-soft lips were quite warm; among the day's very good things. Obscurely pleased, he stored the memory away for safe-keeping. Then Penelope's voice drifted downstairs from the second landing. John immediately altered course to avoid her, ducking into the kitchen. His father's wife did not like him. Never had. The feeling was… not exactly mutual, but… confused and defensive. Guarded. Almost as though… Once again, his thoughts took a sharp left turn past blinking caution lights and bright yellow "do not cross" tape. _Nothing_. As though nothing.

Luckily, his grandmother was in the kitchen by the stove, standing on a footstool to stir something which bubbled and smoked in a large copper pot.

"Hey, Grandma," he said, making enough entry noise not to startle her (this time). Victoria Tracy looked up and around, her glasses slightly foggy with cooking steam.

"John Matthew?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She smiled at him and paused in her stirring.

"Come taste this for me, boy. See if it needs any salt."

Obediently, he came forward, crossing from threshold to stove in a few rapid strides. Not that he was hungry, mind you, but when Victoria Tracy said 'taste', you tasted (and damn well liked it).

His grandmother lifted a big metal spoon from the pot, bringing with it a generous helping of beef stew; dense with brown gravy, meat and slices of carrot. Onions, too, John suspected, but she'd been careful avoid netting too many of those.

"Blow on it, boy. You'll burn yourself."

He did so, and then (with her tipping the spoon and cupping one gnarled hand below his chin to catch any drips) John previewed supper.

"Well?" his grandmother demanded. "Won't kill nobody, will it?"

He shook his head and smiled. There was a literal world of difference between _this_ and the plastic-bagged, chemically stabilized stew-like substance he'd consumed so often on Mars.

"It's good, Grandma. Maybe needs a little more pepper, but I don't know… my sense of taste is still adjusting."

"And you're too skinny, by half," she grumped, setting the spoon aside to fuss at straightening his tee-shirt and blond hair. "But we'll get that set to rights, soon enough. Mind you eat what's put in front of you, John Matthew. I want everything gone but the pattern on the plate, and even _that_ best be faded from scraping, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," he replied. Unlike Scott, John had just one dimple, high on the side of his face. It flickered momentarily, then smoothed away again. Quick as a firefly. "I'll eat. I promise."

"Huh!" Victoria snorted, turning back to the stove like she'd just won a major battle. "Don't think I won't watch to be sure, boy. I ain't one of them NASA doctors. I know what's what."

Her apron bow was loose, so John retied it for her. Not too tight, but enough to protect the big Hawaiian print shirt and denim skirt she wore underneath. Then he did a few dishes, despite the way she upbraided him for setting his hand to "women's work".

Grandma snapped at his rear end with a dishtowel repeatedly, but John didn't quit until the cutting board, knife and frying pan were clean and put up to dry. Victoria grumbled and fussed the entire time, cranky as a grizzled old she-bear.

There was a thing she did, sometimes, pushing the hair out of his eyes. Well, she didn't need her silvery hair pushed, so John straightened her glasses, instead. He hadn't been home long enough to say everything that mattered, and wouldn't have known how to, anyway. But his grandmother understood all that. Like TinTin's brief peck, something else to store up and remember.

A few minutes afterward, John reached the upstairs suite that he shared with Dr. Bennett and the baby, both of whom were out on the terrace.

"How was lunch?" his wife asked him, rising from her chair to hand Janie over. She'd been sitting in the shade of an awning, playing with their daughter and watching the ocean. Wives expected a kiss. Babies did, too, for that matter. Both of them got one.

"It was okay," he said, referring to lunch with his brothers. "Dad showed up."

"Oh?" Linda squinted at her tall husband, who settled himself on the chair beside hers.

"Yeah. He talked about the president and, um… business. WorldGov wants to audit the books, apparently. So he told me to get in there first, and be creative."

Dr. Bennett sighed, watching small Janie catch hold of her daddy's blond hair and tee-shirt. After a moment, because something inside her had been twisting for weeks like a caged ferret, she said,

"John… it's been great, here, don't get me wrong… and your family's been wonderful, but…"

He met her gaze over Janie's unsteady golden head.

"But…?"

"When do we leave? When do we get a place of our own, and start a real life, again? Okay… NASA's upset about the machines and… and the baby. Fine. _Let_ them be! There are other places to work. I can find a hospital in need of a good general practitioner, somewhere that TA's got a branch office… Not Houston, obviously, or Pasadena, but what about Jersey? You've always liked the Princeton area, haven't you?"

He nodded wordlessly, looking past Linda's right shoulder at restless jungle and water.

"Well, then, why not move out there? Sunshine… I've never even cooked dinner for us. You know that? We've never gone shopping for… for pictures or curtains. _Anything._"

Taking a deep breath, she added urgently,

"I don't want to be part of the Tracy conglomerate, John. I want us to be a family: you, me and Junior. Don't you?"

The baby squirmed in his tightening grip and began to cry. He shifted her to one shoulder (the right) and commenced patting her back. Then he stood up and began pacing the length and breadth of the terrace, giving Kara Jane-Ellen Tracy a change of scenery.

"Well… _don't_ you?" his wife probed, plumping herself down on a striped chaise longue. She was mad at him, maybe. Possibly because he'd been so busy, lately, or because she'd lost everything but PR trick-pony status with the folks at the swamp. Just like Pete, Roger, Cho, Ilon, Rachael and the rest, John Tracy and Linda Bennett had come under tight scrutiny after returning from Mars. Understandable... They'd survived where others had not, after all, and Captain Black had publicly accused them of being clones.

To make matters worse, John had taken it upon himself to adapt alien technology in order to set up communications and begin rebuilding the base. He'd delayed mentioning the existence of living, sentient, post-invasion machines, insisting that they were harmless. Then... somehow... he'd gotten his brand-new wife pregnant. Shouldn't have happened. She'd received a heavy-duty contraceptive shot back on Earth, and another at 2 years Mission Elapsed Time. Linda Bennett should never have been able to conceive, much less carry to term. And yet, there was Junior; alive and well and amazingly healthy.

WorldGov authorities, worried about a possible Mysteron connection, had ordered NASA to "clean things up". Long story short, Linda and John had refused to play ball, and Houston wouldn't force them to. Nevertheless, things had changed.

Janie was still fussing; a drooling blonde bundle of squirm. She smelled of powder and strained peaches, and whatever it was that Linda had on, this morning. Under the one-piece, animal-print outfit she wore, her diaper crinkled. But there was only so much time you could waste observing your baby, instead of your wife. John cleared his throat.

"Doctor," he said, glancing over, "I have no objection to leaving the island with you, once a couple of things get taken care of. Right now, travel to the States is still restricted, though. Are you…" He hesitated. "Linda, there might be reporters; once word gets out that we're back on the mainland with Junior, they're bound to show up. Are you prepared for that kind of attention?"

Linda stood up and came over to hug him.

"Absolutely," she whispered; brown eyes closed and arms clutching tight. "It's that, or go crazy doing nothing. How long till wheels up? Give me an estimated time of departure, sunshine."

John put an arm around her and ducked to kiss the top of Linda's head.

"Month and a half?" he ventured. "Forty-five days? I could get my father's records in order by that time, and help Brains set up a 3-D printing system… plus you could see about getting a new job."

She looked up at him with one of those weird-ass, complicated expressions that females sometimes hit you with. Sort of a smile, but with tears and a trembling mouth; whatever the hell _that_ combination meant. She sob-laughed, then, saying,

"The first thing I'm going to make is spaghetti and meatballs, in my own kitchen. I'll serve it in _our_ dining room, and the curtains will be blue. I'll go to work everyday, see whiny, hypochondriac patients until I'm ready to kill them all, then pick up the baby and go home. Sometimes, _you'll _cook."

John laughed a little, that dimple showing up, again.

"Domino's Pizza delivers," he quoted, kissing a happy wife.

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_A little earlier, back on the lower pool deck-_

Gordon Tracy was wise enough to get well quit of the area, and Alan right along with him. Left the clearing-up for Scott and Virgil, they did, skiving off quick to seek amusement elsewhere. At a bend in the sunny garden path, where a graceful iron bench sat beneath flowering tree limbs, the brothers paused for breath.

"Dude," Alan said with a very wide grin, "let's go surfing! Wax up the boards and hit the beach, I'm for totally real."

Gordon smiled back.

"Brilliant," he replied, reaching into a waterproof pocket for his cell phone. "I'll just ring TinTin up and…"

Alan scowled, catching his brother's wrist.

"How come? Dude, it's like guy-time, okay? No chicks till we've been tubed at least three times, both of us. Anyways, TinTin can't surf rough water. You know that! All she'll want to do is sit on the beach, reading. Then you'll feel sorry for her and go in, and I'll be out there alone, on my ownsome."

Gordon shifted his stance on the graveled path, pulling his wrist free with a sudden sharp jerking motion.

"Get off," he said mildly, adding, "She'll be no bother at all, my oath on it."

Alan's gaze narrowed, becoming a hard, bright-blue stare that could have lasered through concrete and steel.

"Why's T so important to you, lately, Gordon? Are you, like, in _love_ with her, or something?"

And then, when Gordon didn't answer immediately,

"Well…? Are you?"

Tree branches swayed in the warm breeze and cascades of white flowers swirled down, but neither young man took notice. Instead, Gordon's muscles bunched when Alan slapped at the top of his coppery head.

"C'mon, bro. Snap out of it. She's controlling your mind, or something, just like she did to those guys at the stadium."

Gordon stepped forward aggressively; angry (and perhaps a bit concerned).

"Shut it, Alan. You've fewer brains than manners, if that's even possible. TinTin's done nothing t' my head but cure a damned concussion, understand? Next time anyone suggests otherwise, they'll be pickin' up teeth."

"Yeah?" His brother snapped back. "Go ahead and try, jacktard. You're slower than Christmas paint drying on grass that won't even grow!"

For some stupid reason, Alan _wanted_ a fight. Maybe because he was more than half in love with TinTin, himself. He shoved his brother, who shoved right back, hard enough to send Alan reeling wildly toward the bench.

"And you're stupid, too!" Alan mocked, once he'd regained his balance and kicked the gravel out of his flip-flops. "Know why? 'Cause, even if you _do_ get her, you'll have to spend the rest of your life wondering if you had any _choice."_

Gordon lunged. Alan tried to twist aside, but his brother's pile-driving left hook caught him, anyhow. Didn't feel like a fist. Felt like a thundering dump truck. Showers of sparks and stars and lines of fire (but only one tooth) erupted from Alan's head. Blood, too.

Rubbery-limp, he collapsed. Would have fallen for sure but someone… Gordon… caught him. Gravel crunched and scattered as his red-haired brother guided the bleeding young man to a seat on the bench.

"Alan, I'm sorry," Gordon said to him, searching both their pockets for something that would do for a handkerchief. "That was bloody horrid of me. I should never have…"

"You kidding me?" Alan scoffed blearily, accepting a balled-up and marmite-stained paper napkin. "Never even felt it. 'S nothing but a mosquito bite, bro. For real… you're losing your stuff."

"Right," his brother grinned savagely. "Stand up and let me have another go, then. I'll knock the sense back into you, along with a bit of tact."

In response, Alan pulled a Scott. He reached up with one hand and mussed his brother's red hair. Keeping the napkin pressed to his split, swelling lip and new tooth-cavity, he said,

"I love you, man. You know that, right? We've been best buds since the first of _ever,_ okay?"

Gordon nodded cautiously, sensing an unspoken "but". And, sure enough…

"But you gotta think this through, Gords. She's got, like, _abilities._ Weird, psychic-power stuff. How do you know what you're feeling's for real, even? I mean… she could _make_ you love her, if she wanted to. Am I right?"

It was just about then that TinTin Kyrano appeared, hurrying wide-eyed and breathless from the direction of the house. Sensed something happening, possibly. At any rate, Gordon patted his brother's arm and stood straight. Alan turned to see what he was looking at, and then mumbled,

"Great. Frickin' wonderful!"

But Gordon paid no further heed. Instead, the athlete left Alan's side to join TinTin. The girl's long, dark hair swung silky-loose to her waist. Above a pink halter top, her perfect oval face was a battleground of worry and affection and deep-scarlet shame. Gordon reached for her hand, saying,

"Hullo, Angel. Alan's got a bit sun-struck, I'm afraid. He… _erm_, collided with a tree and out popped a tooth. Funny how that sort of thing happens, innit?"

Deliberately and very fiercely, he pushed away all thought of what Alan had said to him, concentrating on the sun-spotted path and warm breeze. Concentrating on _her._

"Let's walk on, shall we?" Gordon suggested, clasping TinTin's hand a bit tighter. "He'd like t' be alone with his thoughts, now, I'm certain."

TinTin looked over one shoulder at Alan, then back at Gordon. Perhaps she knew what had happened, or simply guessed it. In any event, tears began clouding her tilted dark eyes. Once out of sight of the bench, he halted her, saying,

"Here, now… enough of that. I've never known cryin' t' leave one anythin' at all but wet and half-blinded. Makes th' nose run awfully, too, and I'm bang out of handkerchiefs."

Gordon used the hem of his rugby shirt to wipe her tears away with, or tried to. TinTin batted his hand aside, but managed a smile. And she did not turn her head away when Gordon made as if to kiss her. In fact, she leaned forward.

She was warm and soft, with half-parted lips that tasted of bubble-gum. When, after a bit, they separated, TinTin whispered,

"Gordon, please believe that I would _never_…"

"I know that, Angel. As I said, it was sunstroke talkin', and he was no bargain in th' shade, to' begin with." Then, because it felt right, he told her, "I love you. Always have done, and while I've th' courage t' say so, I shall. From th' first time we met, you're all there's been: air, water, food and TinTin, with the first three entirely negotiable. Or t' put it another way, _Je t'aime_."

TinTin blushed. Gordon's French was quite halting, but the words as unmistakable as the emotion that backed them. She looked at him, smiling very shyly. Then, not sure what to say in return, TinTin buried her face against his neck. And for her, too, the fit was at long last utterly perfect. A soaring bright soap-bubble love. So she said,

"Je t'aime, aussi."

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_Back in the house, at more or less the same time-_

Fermat Hackenbacker sat in his room, puzzling over all the data he'd slowly, painstakingly, collected. Black's escape ship had come apart into 13 self-guided pieces. Bits of an alien miracle which had gone to ground all over the world and the Moon. Emerald shards had been tracked to Frau Mauro and the Ocean of Storms, as well as Earth's South Pacific basin, Kunlun Mountains, Siberian Steppes, Canadian wilderness, Sahara Desert, Greenland, the Outback and Amazon Jungle. At least one seemed to have buried itself in Antarctica, with two more entirely unaccounted for. All had apparently sought remote locations, a fact that was made worse by the shards' subsequent dig-in and disappearance. Where had they _gone?_ And how could he get hold of one?

The boy sat before his computer screen and ran that search program, again, wondering if Alan or TinTin would help him to look. After all, the Discovery Adventure Team was out there hunting for a "Mystic Green Shard", and if a crew of Hollywood scientists were willing to try, how hard could it be?

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_Elsewhere-_

Having missed his prime target in Tokyo, the assassin set himself a new goal, looking long and hard at his list of marks. The Mysterons were not defeated, you see. They were waiting. And all that he had to do to rouse them was provide the right signal; one as big and hot as a city-wide funeral pyre.


	4. 4: The Other Women

Thanks very much for your reviews of chapter 2, ED, Tikatu, Sam1, Boomercat, Mitzy and SusanMartha. :) Checked over for edits, not much need detected. C.

**4: The Other Women**

_Tracy Island, on the mansion's comfortably-furnished second floor-_

Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward Tracy was rather pleased with her bald and chubby small heir. Only 'rather', because Richard was at that stage where absolutely everything must go into the mouth (a phase which not all men were prone to grow out of). He was also a bit too damp, noisy and exuberant to tolerate being put down for quiet naps in cot or pram, demanding instead to be walked about and displayed for the masses.

Penelope (or "Biccy" as her friends called her) much preferred handing the bouncing b. into whichever set of willing arms were available… but she was scarcely spoilt for choice at the moment, as everyone else seemed occupied, or else off on business of their own. Even TinTin had vanished like smoke, drat the girl.

His wee lordship, not at all sensible of the dignified blood which had filtered into him through Penelope, gurgled and kicked at her.

_"Do_ be still," she begged, handing her son a nubbly plastic chew-toy. "There's a good lad. Teething, are we?"

If only. That cavernous, itchy pink maw remained innocent of all but spittle and gums, and had constantly got to be rubbed. Blue eyes alight, Richard crowed at her, and then flung his chew-toy down upon the carpeted floor. One of his favourite games was "watch mummy retrieve the dropped article", a sport she had no mind to engage in, this morning. Meaning to impart a stern lesson, Penelope let the blue-striped ring of chilled plastic lie where it had fallen, and moved on.

By ancient tradition, Richard had inherited a fine title, one which might be conferred upon male heirs, alone. Thus, while Penelope was reckoned a lady and had been received quite often at court, there were certain honours, lands and… not to put too fine a point on it… _funds_ which had passed her right over, descending from her late father to wee, smelly Richard. Not that he seemed much appreciative.

_Beyond doubt,_ she thought, (once more removing her sodden collar-point from the heir's toothless mouth and pudgy fist) _I __must__ engage a nanny!_

Penelope had wandered into the 'family room', still considering how best to arrange the matter, when Jeff appeared through another doorway.

"There they are!" he fairly bellowed, "my two favorite people!"

Coming forward, her husband first kissed her, then took the squealing child from Penelope's arms and began tossing him into the air and catching him again, calling off a launch countdown before each soaring flight.

"5… 4… 3… 2… 1… _and_ liftoff! We have liftoff of Astronaut Ricky, headed for the stars and galaxies, folks!"

"Jeffery!" his wife gasped, horror-struck. But Richard only chortled and squealed like a tiny, drunken old uncle giving chase to a pretty parlor-maid.

"Jeffery, stop that at once, do you hear? You'll have him spewing in a moment, and I've only just gotten him…"

Jeff would not listen, and (sure enough) at the height of his third suborbital flight, Richard Tracy vomited milk all over his untroubled father. Baby and CEO then proceeded to have a good laugh about it.

"Relax, Penny," her husband instructed the pink-faced young noblewoman. "That's what men do; they get together, horse around, drink too much, and then throw up on each other. Stick around long enough, and you'll get to the part where we pass out cold on the bathroom floor."

Meant as a joke, most likely, but her ladyship didn't laugh.

"I… I see," she murmured, exhibiting the stunned air of one who has just been hit with a flowerpot.

Jeff wiped a hand clean on his trousers, and then reached out to smooth the straggling golden hair from her face.

"Tell you what, Penny. Why don't you go for a stroll in the gardens, or have a nice, hot bath? Take a little time for yourself. Me and Rick, here'll head for the showers and clean ourselves up. Right, Slugger?"

The baby roared his approval, panting like a successful decathlete, and seizing Jeff's shirt with both moist, chubby paws.

"Da!" he cried out. "Da… da… da… _da!"_

Jeff whooped in response, tossing and catching him again.

"That's my boy!" he laughed. "Say 'Dada'. That's my little astronaut!"

They went off together, departing the scene like Attila with a favourite lieutenant. Penelope was left blinking in their wake, quite unable to move or speak. Could it be… was it possible that her only son would turn out to be more his father's child than _hers_?

Rot. Stuff and nonsense. Yet… Penelope shook herself back to life and then felt about for a cell phone, meaning to ring Liddy Farnsworth-Banks, an old school chum. Solid advice, that's what was wanted; that, and a sympathetic ear. Consequently, at the same precise moment that a phone began buzzing by the bed of this aforementioned Liddy, Penelope's dainty feet took her straight to the kitchen, where her aged mother-in-law could be found.

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_Earlier, in Oahu, Hawaii, not far from Hickam Air Force Base-_

Cindy could have gnawed big chunks from the walls of her elegant hotel suite and spat back a pile of bricks. _'Impatient'_ was a very mild word. _'Furious'_, too weak.

Things were happening out there! Dramatic and history-making events! Daggers of alien tech had apparently begun worming their way through Earth's crust… _and_ the Moon's; digging into both worlds, like the roots of some dangerous strangling vine. Elsewhere, bombs had been set, only just not eliminating Lady Murasaki and her uncle, the lord of Clan Fujiwara.

Watching as other, less capable, reporters discussed the missing shards and most recent presidential assassination attempt, Cindy threw her remote at the wall-sized TV screen. So much going on, while she was stuck _here,_ in Hawaii, prevented from saying a word or investigating the least little hunch. And all because an upstart district judge couldn't wink and look the other way while a reporter did her damn _job._

Worse than that, it was nearly zero hour; almost time for Cindy Taylor-Tracy, local celebrity, to drag herself back to King Kamehameha Elementary school and face _them: _a mob of sticky, chaotic munchkins straight out of Sesame Street hell.

No, she didn't care why 6 was afraid of 7… or why the hell Banana kept knocking… or what was black and white and red all over! Hadn't the faintest interest in establishing which was better: Superman or Hello Kitty or strawberry milkshakes… didn't give a good _goddam_ that Billy Potter stole the class pet and hid it for a week in his desk (but being a goldfish… in a paper cup… it was the smell that eventually tipped them all off).

…Yet she had to pretend, because "Miss Cindy's Story Time" had become a beloved feature on Channel 3, and because the Right Honorable Larry Ho was _watching_ her. Cindy shuddered and then pivoted for another look at the tall, mellow-voiced grandfather clock which stood across from her suite's foyer.

10:30.

No condemned prisoner had ever dreaded the slow, water-drop-splashing of moments more than Cindy Taylor did, now. When she could delay no further, the seething reporter snatched up a worn copy of _Where the Wild Things Are,_ smeared on a bit of red lipstick, and then stomped out of her palatial hotel suite, muttering imprecations on all children, everywhere. But _especially_ the rosy-cheeked kindergarten class of Beverly Bing.

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_Tokyo, at a hidden, secure location; a private apartment deep underground-_

Lady Murasaki had maintained an aura of calm and chilly composure. While the physicians attended to her and her honored uncle, the World President gave no sign at all that her peace was disturbed.

Yet, wind summons the leaves and worry summoned action. Not for herself was Murasaki concerned. Or, not _only._

Tea things had been laid out by servants on a low, black-lacquered table. The president poured herself some, following all of the delicate, ritualized steps of a tea ceremony, despite having no one present to join her but stone-faced Marines. One of their number lay comatose in the hospital, she knew. He'd been injured while shoving Murasaki and her uncle out of the bombed and collapsing shrine.

A quote came to Murasaki's mind, as she knelt upon a cushion to sip at whisked and freshly poured tea.

"May my heart not break today, for the sea-tides of everyday sorrow are strong, but I am sorrow, itself…"

"Ma'am?" Her guard captain asked, having not quite understood the whispered words. He was a good-hearted and stout young man, wearing no fewer bandages than Murasaki, herself. The president looked at him. Then, she said,

"Your comrade… Sergeant Blaine… shall be attended to by my own physicians, Captain. He, and the rest of my guard, shall receive commendations for valor."

The Marine's face did not change, but he executed a very crisp salute.

"Thank you, Madame President," he said to her, adding, "Blaine was only doing his job. He'll be gladder to hear that he saved your life than that he's earned another medal, once he comes 'round."

Murasaki smiled. She would have offered him tea, had his duty not forbidden anything but vigilant stiffness.

"I shall do better, even, than medals, Captain Burke. I shall arrange to have the assassin captured and those alien artifacts apprehended, so that no more bombings need take place. This will happen, if I must set forth, myself, with a fishing net."

Burke smiled back and gave her a brisk nod.

"At this point, Ma'am, half the free world would jump up and join the hunt. The other half'll watch it on TV, and cheer. There anybody in particular you want me to call, Madame President?"

Murasaki set down her fragile porcelain tea bowl, so softly that its base did not click against the lacquered black tray.

"Indeed, Captain. A certain Dr. Hackenbacker was husband to one who had been controlled by the aliens, and died of it. He is known to be a secretive man, but a man of great wisdom, nonetheless. It may be that he learned something of use from his unfortunate wife, before her demise."

Looking Captain Burke square in the face, dark eyes to green (as though she, and not Hiro, were Lord of Clan Fujiwara) Murasaki gave the command.

"Let this Hackenbacker be brought, with all that he needs in order to set forth a plan of action."


	5. 5: Countdown Resumed

Will try to edit, soon. Have to fix supper, first.

**5: Countdown Resumed**

There were some things that just didn't make the news; information which was actively squelched by a press and government eager to avoid further panic. Among these too-hot-to-be-publicized items: Captain Scarlet had vanished from the Spectrum facility in London; leaving without a word, a note or any hint at all as to _why._

The last person to see him had been Simone Girardoux, an Angel pilot still in mourning for her disgraced fiancé, Conrad Lefkon. Yes, Simone had seen Scarlet... but she could tell the investigators nothing, except that "Dear Paul" had tried to comfort her, and that he'd then left the building to take an important phone call. But that had been many days earlier, and the trail was now grown quite cold.

No one had been able to locate Captain Black, either; though just about all of Earth's investigative resources were bent to the task. They were wasting their time, for the assassin could travel instantaneously by means of thirteen alien gates… the shards of his altered X-90… which were buried throughout Earth and the Moon, and linked to a hidden kernel on Mars. Better than that, the shards were still moving, chewing through the deep roots of mountains and the foundation of cities; melting the base of great ice sheets and burrowing close to the Moon Station. In preparation, one might say.

Not that Sol-3's inhabitants understood what was about to happen. Not with so many agents among them spreading lies and confusion. No, the soon-to-be-harvested organics remained largely ignorant, believing that their enemy had been defeated and that their leader's plans were quite secret. They were wrong.

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_Somewhat later, Tracy Island-_

Fate turns on a coin-flip, on a word or a shift in the wind_._ On sunny Kanaho, twenty-one people flitted here and there, busy with this and with that. Jeff and a cleaned-up small Ricky were up in the master suite, watching baseball on television.

Penelope had taken a seat in the breakfast nook with 'Mother Tracy'. They met for tea, conversation and counsel (necessary, because Liddy's advice had been to pack up at once for Britain and Foxleyheath… but Penny did not wish to go).

Gordon and TinTin's path had brought them down to the shore; holding hands and pausing occasionally for a bit of soft kissing. He'd have liked more than that, maybe, but was willing to rein himself in. Hardly dared breathe, in fact, for fear that he'd startle the lass, whose body and mind brushed his own with such awkward and trembling gentleness. Almost as though _she_, and not Gordon, was the one trying terribly hard to hold back.

Brains was well below ground with Fermat, occupied in the lab and construction area. Expanded specs for a proposed Thunderbird had been projected on the giant wall screen before them; scribbled all over with arrows, coded comments and occasional erasures. The words appeared in real-time, inscribed by a distant and critical hand. John's.

Away upstairs in his suite, the astronaut had a light pen and screen of his own. He also had an unmatched knowledge of Mysteron technology, and the will to adapt it. NASA hadn't wanted to use what he knew, and a publicly-traded company like Tracy Aerospace could not afford to be gossiped about, but International Rescue was another matter. Given what they planned to do, IR needed every bit of captured technology and boosted power it could get. Thus, Brains, John and Fermat were hard at work on a stupendously fast scout-craft (John with a baby on his lap, reaching for the computer screen and light pen).

Outside, Alan had stanched his split lip and pocketed that tooth. Brains could set the thing and laser it back in, he figured… Or, John's wife could. She was a doctor, right? Sighing, Alan trudged house-ward along shady garden paths, still in something of a funk. Mad at himself for saying that stuff to Gordon… Mad at his brother for being such an idiot about TinTin that he'd start throwing punches… and wondering if most of his own crappy mood was because TinTin had picked someone _else_. Not that, you know, he'd really _wanted_ her, or anything…

Scott and Virgil Tracy had chosen to work off their lunch with a brisk jog on the sparkling black-sand beach. Scott's back still troubled him, at times, causing the pilot to slow down his pace, and Virgil to rib him unmercifully. Still, the ocean's boom and spray were refreshing, the westering sun like a golden-warm balm. In a place like this, it was easy to ignore sore backs and teasing brothers. He loved the water; from wading pool to cow pond to vast, surging ocean. Just like flying a plane, standing near water had always helped to clear Scott's mind.

Point being, on this late afternoon in September, the family and servants were scattered. Unprepared when three silent, radar-invisible strike craft came at the island on different vectors, streaking in low and unannounced.

The Tracys' defenses were still rudimentary in those days; no more than the usual sensor net and motion-detector system. They did not see the craft in time to question their approach. And soon, they were unable to act, at all. Outside comm and television signals cut suddenly off. Then the main power-feed, plunging Tracy Island's lab-complex and warehouse into absolute darkness. Screens went blank, as well, in the master suite, the breakfast nook, the servants' quarters and remote work stations.

Almost before the startled family had time to look around, three sleek, dark aircraft swooped in like owls; serpent-quick and utterly silent, glowing just slightly green. Black-garbed, hooded gunmen surged from the craft, which landed on the pool decks and patio, cracking the tile and scattering umbrellas. Their orders were to lock down the island, corral its inhabitants and eliminate a certain scientist. For most of them, _why_ did not matter. Only their leader had been given a reason.

John did two things, so swiftly that the strike team could not interfere. _First,_ using back up power, he wiped the island's mainframe and servers, triggering a self-destruct signal that left even PDAs and laptops in smoldering chaos. Then he shoved his protesting wife and baby through a disguised service door that led to the underground lab.

"Find Hackenbacker and stay with him," he told her, as dark-clad figures raced for the house. Linda twisted in his grip, but could not wrench free.

"John, _no!"_ she said. "I'm not going to leave you up here, alone! I can…"

He shook his blond head and pointed at their daughter, while the clock ticked and assassins drew nearer.

"Maybe _you_ can, but she's too little to take care of herself, Doctor. I can't deal with this situation while I'm worrying about her safety and yours. You need to leave. _Now."_

He kissed her, and then pushed his wife and daughter out through the workstation's hidden door. Shape memory wall-covering erased any traces of a threshold or knob, while a single word sound-proofed and locked it. She could come out again, through Ike's room or down at the shore-side hangar, but nowhere closer, and not very quickly. Phase 1 accomplished.

John Tracy had a gun; a .38 caliber police special that he'd taken the bullets out of and put safe away, for the baby's sake. Took several minutes of time he hadn't got to fish it down from the closet and load it, again. Made him feel better to have a cold, heavy ally in hand again, though, and made phase 2 even possible. At that point, he only intended to create a distraction, stall for time and get an alarm signal off.

On the beach, Scott and Virgil rounded a long point of reddish-dark lava-rock at a panting, homestretch run. Cold drinks and a shower were just a few hundred feet away, when disguised gunmen sprang from the rocks and surrounded the skidding, sand-scattering brothers. Drenched in sweat, out of breath, Scott would still have fought them. Air Force downed-pilot survival school reflexes were extremely tough to shake.

"On your knees! Hands behind your head, fingers laced," one of the raiders… Scott counted seven of them… commanded. For punctuation, they racked back the slides of their machine pistols, making a chorus of brittle-sharp clicks. Message delivered, or so they expected.

When neither Virgil nor Scott made a move to comply, the same cold voice said,

"Gentlemen, we can secure you _dead_ as easily as alive. Easier. Neither of you is the man we're looking for, which means you're about as valuable to me as a used tissue. _Down,_ or I solve all our problems the quick way."

Scott Tracy racked his brain, gauging angles of attack, nearness of available weaponry (driftwood and stones) and Virgil's silent, poised readiness. His brother wasn't panting now, and there was no trace of surrender in Virgil's hard stare.

But a smart man figured the odds. Faced with bad ones, he knew how to fold on that hand and wait for a better opportunity. Virgil's brown eyes flicked over to Scott's narrowed blue ones. Both men had the same thought: _Not here,_ and _not yet._

Meanwhile, primed by his earlier scuffle with Gordon, Alan faced assailants of his own. They surrounded him on the garden path, just twenty yards shy of the pool deck's wrought iron gate. Stubbornly, the boy tried to fight them. Inevitably, struggling like a wildcat, he went down.

Grandma Tracy's first hint that her "no trespassing" signs hadn't worked came from Aloysius Parker. The driver burst into her clean, bright kitchen like a Rugby forward who'd just taken hold of the ball. There was a gun in his hand.

"Milaidy… Ms. Tracy… Come with me, please!"

Penny stood up, shocked.

"Good heavens, Parker! What can you possibly mean by rushing in like a wild man?"

_"You, there! Drop the weapon!"_ someone snarled from the hallway. Not loudly, but with absolute, frigid authority.

Parker spun on his heel in the threshold, pistol already rising. A weird light flared just above the chauffeur's balding head. It reached tendrils forth like lashing whips of white flame. One of them touched Parker, who first stiffened and then seemed to go all at once boneless. He and the gun dropped together. His pistol hit the tiled floor, bounced once and fired, putting a hole in Grandma's copper sauce pan and the stewpot, which then tipped, clattered and commenced leaking its contents.

The kitchen air quivered with gun-smoke and echoes, but neither Grandma nor Penelope reacted. They, too, had been stunned unconscious. Someone entered the room seconds later, stepping over Parker's prone body.

"Not here, either," said a black-garbed raider, muttering into his headpiece. "Three secured in the kitchen, sir. One disarmed while attempting to flee. Single shot fired; no casualties."

Or, none so far. Overhead and to the right, another gun roared, barking five times like Cerberus. The man looked upward, expertly tracking the sound.

"Shots fired upstairs… sounds like the east wing, Sir."

Something bumped and thudded. Not like a dead, falling body. Like a heavy object being thrown down stairs. The gunman tensed, waiting. Then he heard the same sharp, sizzling _crack_ that had accompanied his own stun-discharge.

_"Stand by,"_ someone else ordered. And then,

_"One secured upstairs, Sir, outside of residential suite C,"_ announced a third transmitted voice, whispering leaf-like through everyone's earpieces. _"Not our target, but may have gotten off an SOS. Subject was armed and carrying a hybrid-tech comm device. We have a man down, Sir. Injured, not dead."_

_"On my way. Confiscate the device, patch your team-mate and bring in your captures. The target's here, somewhere. He's got to be."_

Gunshots carry. Even to two young people deeply absorbed in each other, in the shade of a banyan tree, out by the rumbling shore. Gordon pulled away from TinTin, suddenly, looking up and around, then back toward the distant mansion.

"Was that…?"

They heard another soon afterward; five more in all, booming and echoing aloud. A weapon, and not fired skeet-tempo, either.

"Bloody hell! Somethin's happened at home."

Gordon turned to face TinTin, whose dark eyes had grown very wide, and whose skin was now pale as a bed-sheet. She did not look frightened, however; more like someone trying very hard to just keep still and _listen._

"TinTin, c'n… are you able t' sense anything?" he asked urgently, taking her cold little hand.

In a faint, emotionless voice, the lass replied,

"We have been attacked, Gordon. There are many men here who do not belong, and their thoughts are guarded and dark. I can mask _our_ presence from them, but your father and brothers… et mon pere… les enfants… "

She could _feel _them struggling; in her mind heard the babies crying as they were nervously shushed and held close. Catching just a bit of this, Gordon thought hard and squeezed both her slim shoulders with his hands. A strategist, he was not, and yet…

"Angel, if we're t' do our families any good at all, we must try reachin' th' house. _Safely and quietly_ so. There's a tunnel from th' shore-hangar we might take… it passes th' lab and then straight on through t' th' warehouse and basements. We could try, at any rate… if you're minded t' join me in stirrin' up trouble, that is."

The shotgun locker would be on their way, as well; print-sealed against intruders, but wide open to family. Sensing his thoughts, TinTin nodded reluctantly.

She tried her own cell phone and then Gordon's, quickly discovering that calling for help was impossible. Panic rose, but she stifled it. Looking at the red-haired young man who loved her, TinTin said,

"Oui, Mon Coeur. Let us do as you propose… but only if you swear to listen, should I ask you to stop, or to wait."

Despite the situation, Gordon couldn't help smiling crookedly.

"Have done so far, haven't I?" he teased, giving her long, raven hair an affectionate muss. TinTin leaned forward and hugged him quite fiercely, whispering,

"That is not what I meant at all, Gordon. My love, my heart… Listen to me: there is courage and there is good sense. _Please_… use both of them now, or I fear we are lost."

He grew serious and kissed her again, saying,

"Right. Will do, so long as _you_ agree t' hang back and apply your own talents from safe cover. Reconnoiterin's your job; sneak attacks're mine. Have we an agreement?"

She nodded, tear-blinded but able to see, guided by Gordon's vision and the swift, jagged splinters she'd got from their captured family and those soulless-dark raiders. Together, TinTin Kyrano and Gordon Tracy hurried along the foot of the cliff, keeping to salt-crusted rocks and shadowy clefts as they made for the island's main hangar.

…And no one yet had found Fermat, or Brains.


	6. 6: No Choice

Little bit more. Edited.

**6: No Choice**

_Tracy Island, later that evening-_

Jeff was escorted at gun-point from his suite to the pool deck. Most of the servants had already been grouped there, not far from his unconscious mother and wife. With a hoarse cry, Jeff rushed forward, meaning to check on the women and poor, sprawled-out Parker.

He didn't get far. Prodding gun barrels and raised, threatening rifle butts closed in immediately, halting Jeff's progress like he'd been roped and thrown. Very aware of the scared baby boy in his arms, Jeff allowed himself to be driven back, stumbling toward a sleek, black aircraft with a seamless hull and what looked like a green Cyclops-light tracking slowly across the fuselage. There were three of them, in all; eerily silent and somehow alive. He could have sworn that the green eye-lights of each plane shifted to watch his approach.

"Who are you people?" Jeff demanded, keeping his voice low so as not to frighten the baby. "What do you want? Money?"

Spotting Penelope, Ricky reached past Jeff's broad right shoulder and started to cry. As best he could, Jeff shushed his small son; patting Ricky's back and whispering meaningless comfort.

No one answered his question, although they talked among themselves and made good and damn certain he didn't move off. Bits of intel were whispered, news of various captures. Scott and Virgil, at the beach… Kyrano, in the laundry room… Alan was brought in from the gardens, then John from the house, both of them unconscious and bleeding. One of the gunmen had been wounded, as well, Jeff noticed; feeling a small private twist of satisfaction.

Eventually, someone else appeared. A big man dressed and masked in unrelieved black; displaying no rank or unit insignia. An officer of some sort, apparently, judging by the deference with which the other men treated him. He came directly to Jeff, holding a pair of odd devices, one a modified Tracy Aerospace comm unit, the other a data-storage machine loaded with pictures.

With considerable shock, Jeff saw his own image on the unit's small screen. One of his old NASA moon-shot portraits. The officer's attention seemed to move from the image to Jeff's face. Then he paged down to another, more recent picture, taken at the World Trade Summit in Bonn. Jeff recognized the suit he'd been wearing, and Penelope's upswept, sparkling hairdo… that diamond Orion hair-clip she'd had for years and refused to part with…

"Jeff Tracy," said the raiders' officer, his voice muffled and cold through the cloth mask, "with infant son number six, or else the granddaughter. That would make fifteen people out of twenty-one."

He turned to the black-garbed, heavily armed man at his elbow and said,

"By my count, we're missing the scientist, a doctor-wife, the adopted nephew, another serving girl and two kids, one of them an infant. Any chance that they've left for the day?"

"No, sir," his lieutenant replied. "No flight plan's been filed, and these people are professional pilots; engineers and astronauts. They wouldn't take off without one. Intel reports no private watercraft for hundreds of miles, so no one's out fishing, either, sir... But we're likely to have company, soon," he added, nodding at the hybrid TA comm unit.

The leader thanked his man shortly and then turned his attention back to the captive CEO. A setting sun made the air colder, but that was not the source of Jeff's sudden chill. Amid lengthening shadows, the gun barrels reflected a sinister, blood-tinged glow, while the wandering Cyclops-lights on those seamless transport craft glittered greener than poison. Ignoring all this, the lead raider made a great show of examining the TA comm unit.

"Your tech boys have been busy, haven't they, Mr. Tracy? The computers are down and all of your files have been wiped, but there are enough little items like _this_ lying around to convince me you've been adapting Mysteron technology. Seeking an edge on the competition, huh? What's knowledge like that pay, these days? A million? Two mil?"

Jeff did not reply aloud, but he thought: _Is that what this is all about? The damned Mysteron tech?_

The man went on, saying,

"We're very interested in your chief scientist, Mr. Tracy. The one who told the world all about Captain Black… and we're not the only ones looking. Your "Hiram Hackenbacker" is a very popular man, right now. Gets invited out by _all_ the right people."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jeff replied, more or less truthfully. Brains had revealed Fermat's discoveries to the press and the world, keeping his son's involvement to a minimum for security reasons. The rest of Hackenbacker's knowledge was similarly second-hand, coming mostly from John (who still lay unconscious on cracked, patterned tile, though Alan had begun to stir).

Said the raiders' officer; softly, dangerously,

"Where is he, Mr. Tracy?"

If he'd had the power, Jeff would have transported everyone… from his stony-faced servants to fist-chewing Ricky… right the hell out of there, leaving only himself in danger. Alone, he could have endured most anything.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jeff Tracy repeated, feeling something cold and heavy clutch at his vitals.

"I don't have time to play twenty questions," the gunman replied. "You'll no doubt be entertaining a second wave of guests, soon. I mean to be well away from this place when they arrive."

Jeff's lower jaw tightened. Sweat trickled icy down his back, plastering shirt to flesh. He didn't say anything, though. No one did. Even the baby had quieted.

The leader nodded, and then walked to the spot where Penelope, Grandma and John had been dumped, not at all far from the silky-calm pool. Quite casually, he remarked,

"The stun-burst is a very effective weapon, Mr. Tracy. In most cases, it will render the subject completely unconscious for hours, no matter what stimulation is applied."

Beneath the mask, his voice smiled nastily. Then, prodding Lady Penelope with a booted foot, he began talking again.

"A choice for you, Mr. Tracy; a cost you've incurred by stalling. Who shall I have thrown in the water to drown? Your wife, your mother or your son?"

Two of the masked raiders came forward at their leader's gesture, standing by to commit cold-hearted, business-like murder.


	7. 7: Stealth

**7: Stealth**

_Tracy Island, near sunset, out on the beach by a long point of weathered dark rock-_

When your options were few, it sometimes paid to just play along. For awhile, at least. Hoping that Virgil understood what he was doing, Scott brought both hands up and back, and then made as though starting to kneel.

The pilot moved slowly, meaning to lure his attackers forward, and arrange optimal positions for himself, the gunmen and driftwood. He knew exactly what he was doing, of course. People see what they want to in crisis situations, and what the black-maskers wanted to see was cooperation; a swift, seamless capture following initial resistance.

When Scott and Virgil seemed to capitulate, one of the men lowered his weapon; tucking the machine pistol under an arm while he reached for a pair of rubberized, dark-painted handcuffs. Others breathed easier, too, thinking _ahead_ instead of paying attention to the matter at hand. Their squad leader relaxed enough to call in his prizes, turning away to speak into some kind of head-set.

The cuff-wielder started for Virgil, who seemed just as young and confused as a new ranch-hand going to town with his first month's pay. Another man headed for Scott, but the pilot wasn't so far along in that "give yourself up" business as he'd appeared. When the right moment came, Scott converted his motion to a down-and-forward lunge. His right knee struck the end of a silvery driftwood branch, flipping it up off the hard-packed sand. At the same instant, Virgil Tracy bolted from his partial crouch.

Made fast and muscular by years of football, he seized his captor's machine pistol and landed a punch to that masked, cursing face. Cartilage crunched. Teeth split Virgil's knuckles, but the man went flying like a loose-limbed doll.

Scott seized the up-ended driftwood stick and surged to his feet. Wielding it like a bat, he cracked the weapon in half across the head of his own would-be captor. The man twisted and dropped, gun jerking upward, unconscious before he hit the ground.

They were trained to silence, these raiders, or they would surely have called for help. Virgil fired his stolen machine pistol in short, juddering bursts, striking the sand at the remaining men's feet. Black, stinging particles flew everywhere, erupting like steam from a burst pipe and obscuring their vision. An oddly quiet steam pipe, because even the gun was muted; barely coughing as it chewed up the beach.

Then something arced high into the air, glittering silver above sand-cloud and people, alike. Scott figured: _grenade._ He leapt, caught the thing like a fly-ball and hurled it right back. Virgil must've had the same thought, because he jumped, too; tackling Scott to the ground and covering his older brother with his own body.

Light flashed. Something crackled, fierce as a high-voltage discharge. Already on the ground, breath choked by flying sand, Virgil and Scott were spared the stun-burst's effects. Not so the gunmen, who were bitten by tendrils of snaking power, and rendered instantly senseless. They collapsed to the beach like dropped groceries, not even twitching.

"My… back…!" was the first thing Scott said. Or grunted, rather. "Get _off!"_

Virgil spat sand, rolled aside and grinned at his creaky brother.

"You're welcome," he said, getting to his feet with fast, fluid ease. Offering Scott a hand up, Virgil squinted at the sunset and added, "Don't know what's going on back at the house, Scott, but if this crew showed up _here…"_

"They've probably got friends, striking elsewhere," Scott finished for him. "Makes sense that their greatest strength would be directed at target-rich environments... if hostages are what they're after." At the moment, there was no way to tell, and neither young man had brought along his phone.

Virgil looked worried. As Scott set about confiscating body armor and weapons from the downed gunmen, he asked,

"Think dad and the rest're all right?"

"No," Scott replied, tossing his brother a second machine pistol and stun-grenade. "But they will be, once we get up there and start handing our guests their own asses… shot full of smoking holes."

Virgil and Scott were still in the process of arming themselves when they heard gunfire; a single, almost cannon-like roar followed by five clear, echoing _cracks._

"Hurry!" Scott ordered, yanking the mask and twisted head-set from one of their unconscious prisoners. (The smashed-nosed and no-more-front-teeth one.) "Get these men cuffed in a circle, above the tide-line, and let's go, Virge. Bring all the weapons you can carry. Dad knows how to shoot, and so does John. Gordon and Grandma, too. Any leftover guns go in the water, as far as you can throw them."

"Right," his brother replied tensely, trying not to visualize what might be happening, back at the house. Trying not to visualize anything at all but a timely arrival.

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_At the other end of a long, private beach, near the island's main airstrip-_

A pair of young fugitives crouched between the cliff-face and growling sea. Naturally, there had got to be a guard. Gordon Tracy watched from cover, TinTin beside him, as an armed man dressed all in black peered vigilantly from ocean to hangar doors and then back along the cliff. He hadn't noticed them, yet, because TinTin Kyrano wouldn't allow him to, though the effort clearly cost her.

Gordon gave the lass's hand a bit of a squeeze, but it was his warm, stout mind that provided the most comfort. Like a cat, she rubbed against his thoughts and curled close. Yes, Gordon Tracy was physically experienced… regarding sex as no more than pleasant recreation… but his heart was good, and he loved her. These facts both buoyed TinTin and frightened her, for the whispers at night had told the girl that she could not love without destroying. That she could not join herself to another without consuming him, leaving the same trail of emptied, scraped-raw shells that her uncle had.

"There are two ways we might go about this," Gordon whispered, halting TinTin's bleak reverie. "And I'd like y'r help decidin' which one, Angel."

The lass gathered herself, nodded and said,

"I am listening, Gordon. What are the choices, s'il vous plait?"

He smiled at her, briefly; copper hair flaring when angled just so by the wind. Muscular he was, freckled and sunburnt and incredibly dear.

"Right. My first notion is that you concentrate all y'r energies distractin' our mate, over there… whilst I nip down t' deliver a message. Somethin' along th' lines of: _We're_ f_ull up, thanks. Best try th' next island over. _Then, once he's out, we're in; back t' th' house. Home and dry and Bob's your uncle."

TinTin nodded once more, wincing at an ugly, darting thought from the man at the airstrip. His was a mind of ice, steel and sewage. It sickened her.

"Go on," she said, evenly.

"The second thought... less to my likin'... is that we should follow the cart path on up, keepin' t' cover where possible. 'Tis not very direct, unfortunately, and we're likely t' make a deal of noise comin' through… but we'd not have t' bother with guards, f'r a bit."

There was more, but Gordon's voice was all at once cut off at the mains. He stopped talking to frown at TinTin, distracted from plans and plotting by her odd behaviour. The lass had stiffened again, her eyes growing deep and forlorn as the holes in a skull. Right, then. There were "not good" signs, and "bloody disastrous" ones. This seemed likely to be the latter. Before he could ask what had happened, TinTin whispered,

"I shall keep him preoccupied, Gordon, but we _must_ gain the house! There is no more time… I have heard your father's heart crying out, as though torn from his breast. _Go! Vite!"_

He went, with vengeance. And the blinkered sentry neither saw Gordon coming, knew what had hit him, nor recovered for some time, thereafter.

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_Well below ground, beneath the mansion and lab complex-_

Linda Bennett did not cry, because it wouldn't have done any good. She didn't allow herself to get angry at her husband, because John Tracy _wasn't_ an overbearing, sexist jerk… just an emotionally limited one. And God… Oh, God… she loved him.

If something had happened… if he got himself hurt while she was trapped underground with the baby on this rotten, endless stairway… she'd kill him. She'd rescue John's arrogant ass just to kick it all the way from here to Mars! Linda had pounded at that stupid doorway for ten minutes, shouting at him to let her out, until Janie's terrified wailing brought her back to her senses. A good thing, as it turned out, because comforting poor Junior had brought the doctor a measure of calm, as well.

Anyhow, she could breastfeed and still walk, easing quietly down the metal stairwell with Janie clutched close, holding her cell phone out with her other hand for its soft, bluish light.

Linda made up new names for her husband as she descended the long and whisper-haunted stairs.

John "jackass" Tracy…

John "loser" Tracy…

John "doesn't-understand-partnership" Tracy…

But mostly,

…John "please-be-alive-I'm-coming" Tracy.

No, it didn't make any sense to cry, but Linda was having an awfully hard time preventing herself from doing it. Then,

"D- Dr. Bennett?" someone whispered hesitantly, speaking from the landing below.

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_Outside, near dark, on a crowded pool deck-_

Alan Tracy woke bit by bit, twisting upward through cobwebs of hazy awareness. He'd been beaten unconscious, not stunned, and his whole universe was filled with this blazing, swollen, gosh-awful _throb_. He blamed Gordon, at first; recalling only that fight with his brother. But a moment's thought… the feel of gritty-cold tile beneath his hands and left cheek… the sound of harsh voices and pacing tread… brought back most of the truth. All at once Alan remembered a vicious rush of armed men, recalled his own useless response, and the pain and shock of repeated blows. The memory stirred up a double helping of anger and cold, liquid fear. They'd been attacked, he realized; taken over. Somehow, criminals or crazy people had snuck onto dad's island.

But worse… what if he was the only one left? What if everything depended on _him?_


	8. 8: Open Season

Thanks, ED, Sam and Tikatu.

**8: Open Season**

_Tracy Island, near nightfall, at the increasingly windy pool deck-_

God help him, he couldn't choose. Couldn't speak the jagged thoughts then tearing through his mind. His ornery, well-loved mother… or Penny, who'd brought him youth and real joy… John; quiet, reserved and unknowable… but with a wife and child of his own.

He _couldn't_ choose. Staring at the officer's impassive black mask, Jeff shook his head. Would have said something, offered a vast ransom, maybe; but only a sort of pained growl made it through. The raiders' officer did not seem surprised. In fact, certain movements of that clinging dark mask made it look like he'd actually smiled.

"Too bad, Mr. Tracy," he said, almost gloatingly. "Guess it's the baby, then."

At his order, men came forward to take Ricky from Jeff's arms. Naturally, the CEO fought, as did Elspeth, Kyrano and the other conscious servants. Didn't do them any good. The screaming baby was taken, and Jeff's heart shattered. His will broke, and had he _known_ where Brains was… had he been able to speak at all… he'd have told them everything.

The officer began to bounce and toss the tiny boy, strolling ever nearer the pool's edge. Enjoying himself, and all the while asking those present what they knew about Hackenbacker's whereabouts. But his sadistic show didn't last long. Eventually he turned, cutting off five minutes' worth of garbled, conflicting stories, and returned to the wind-rippled pool.

"Oh, well," he said, holding forth the Tracys' red-faced, shrieking baby. "Easy come, easy go."

Alan got himself halfway up, somehow. Hard to do, because everything he owned that _didn't_ hurt, had gone totally numb. Nevertheless, bracing himself on gritty cracked tiles, scrabbling for purchase with his blood-spattered sneakers, Alan lunged for the officer. He'd meant to tackle the guy and save his little brother, but the lead gunman sidestepped alertly. Alan lost his balance, flailed wildly, and then fell into the pool; breaking from the scream-filled, windy night to a cold, rushing, ears-roaring, bubbly nowhere. Then, kicking feebly, he broke the surface, gasping for air in great sobs.

Greenish spotlights from a trio of weird airplanes pinpointed the frantically sculling boy. In their emerald light, his re-opened cuts streamed blood through the water like squid's ink.

"Well, what do you know?" the officer remarked, tossing Ricky into the water beside his big brother. "A volunteer."

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_Below ground, on a dim metal stairwell-_

Linda Bennett was overjoyed to find someone. _Anyone._ That the voice turned out to belong to Dr. Hackenbacker, a good friend of her husband's, was an added relief. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell her much.

"Th- The power's gone out," Brains reported, once he'd recovered from his blushing shock at her one-armed hug. "I, ah… I t- tried to get b- back in touch with, ah… with John, but he h- hasn't replied, and n- neither will, ah… will anyone else."

Said young Fermat, his face a pale, shifting blue in Linda's cell phone light,

"I d- don't think they… can, Dad. S- Something's happened, out th- there."

Hackenbacker shook his head, stubbornly.

"Don't be such a p- pessimist, son. I'm sure, ah… sure that th- there's a perfectly mundane explanation f- for all this."

"No, Doctor Hackenbacker," Linda corrected grimly. "Your son's right. John threw me down here with Janie and locked the door after me. He wouldn't have done that for anything short of a dire emergency. He…" She bit her lip for a moment, raking the soft flesh between her teeth. "He may not be very communicative, but he loves us, and I think he'd do any stupid thing rather than put us at risk. He's, um… H- He's not… not very smart, that w… that way."

Tears burned at the back of her eyes, and then wouldn't be pent any longer. She started to shake and gasp, wanting out. Wanting to claw her way to the surface and _find_ him.

Hackenbacker patted her shoulder with awkward sympathy. He'd suffered a terrible loss of his own, recently; a gaping hole he could only fill with work, or the comforting association of his comrade and son.

"I'm s- sure that, ah… that John is quite w- well, Doctor Bennett. He h- has a knack for, ah… for survival. It s- seems to be a genetic t- trait, handed down f- for generations."

Linda gave him a watery smile, and then kissed Janie's slack, sleeping face.

"Little girls need their daddies," she whispered. Then, looking fiercely back up at Brains. "Let's go get him, Doctor Hackenbacker. Let's go get all of them."

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_Earlier that same day, at King Kamehameha Elementary School, in the bright, cheery classroom of Beverly Bing-_

_"Miss Cindy"_ had been properly made up and dressed in something fairy-dust kid-friendly. No doubt, they were rolling in the aisles back at WNN San Francisco.

She'd also been placed in her usual big velvet wingchair, this time with Slick Billy, the village pet-thief, on her lap. At least he didn't smell. Much.

Trapped like a bug in a patch of golden sun- and camera light, Cindy Taylor-Tracy read _"Where the Wild Things Are"_ to a group of clustered, criss-cross-apple-sauce seated larvae. They didn't wriggle, or raise their hands to ask dumb questions, or try to go to the bathroom, having enough experience with Miss Cindy by now, to know better. (But hey, that's what made the show entertaining, right? Watching Snow White's Wicked Queen try to baby-sit.)

She was nearly through the second take, had just made it past…

"Max conquered them by staring into their yellow eyes, without... blinking... once."

…When her cameraman's cell phone vibrated sharply in his right hip pocket. Not just any kind of way, either. The particular long-short-long signal he'd received meant that the station was calling, and that the matter was urgent.

Peering once through his camera sight to make sure that everything was still in focus, the genial Hawaiian stepped away from his lens to take the call. His broad face stilled about thirty seconds into the whispered conversation. He nodded several times, hissing that, _yes, he'd got it,_ and _yes, absolutely, he'd let her know._ Then the cameraman put away his phone and looked at Cindy, who'd stopped reading to stare at him.

News, she figured, and (judging by his expression) not good news. The cameraman crossed to her side, wading through the sea of tots like a B-movie rubber monster. Bending low, he whispered in her ear,

"Cindy, there's just been a code-red emergency distress signal broadcast from Kanaho… the island bought by Jeff Tracy. WASP and the Coast Guard are responding, and the station would like to know if…"

Whatever else Ben Tanaka said to her, Cindy failed to hear. _Emergency?_ She thought: _Scott and that mob of brothers are in trouble?_ Still seated on her lap, Billy twisted around to look at Cindy's colorfully painted face.

"Miss Cindy, are you okay? Are you okay, Miss Cindy? Aren't you gonna finish our story?"

Inside, she was all frozen screams and tight-coiled, frustrated action. Outwardly shivering, Cindy hugged the small boy like a teddy bear.

"I have to go home," she told him. "Something's happened to my family."

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_Real time, Tracy Island-_

Between one thing and another, many forces were closing in on the island and pool deck. WorldGov's transport craft was coming to fetch Hackenbacker. WASP and the US Coast Guard were on their way, after having argued a bit over primacy and tactics, then clearing the mission with local governments and Tracy Aerospace. Virgil and Scott were dashing very quietly up the long beach stairs, while Gordon and TinTin pounded through the tunnel from the cliff-side airstrip. Fermat was already at the house in grandma's suite, arranging a selection of large, heavy objects that he could throw from her balcony onto the armed men below.

Linda and Brains were closer, still; the doctor having paused just long enough to set her sleeping daughter in a nest of blankets on Victoria Tracy's bed. She had a lifetime of kisses and "_I love you_"s stored up, and maybe five minutes to spend them. It had been horribly hard to turn away.

Hard for Doctor Hackenbacker and Fermat, too. The boy had already lost one parent, and was scared to death of losing another. His hug had all but driven the breath from Hackenbacker's lungs.

…But Alan Tracy knew none of this. He'd fallen in the deep end, and then had to dive down a ways to save his baby brother, who didn't know how to swim. They broke surface together and just managed to stay there, gasping, kicking and coughing.

There aren't many more helpless feelings in the world than treading deep water with banged-up, bloodied arms and legs, trying to keep hold of your little brother, who thinks he's safe, now, because he's with you. And the whole world seems to be green spotlights and black, staring gun muzzles. Alan closed his eyes and pulled Ricky's face against his neck with one hand, because he didn't know what else to do.

"S'okay, little guy," he whispered, bobbing. "Everything's fine. I got you."

Everyone's attention… their pleading and curses, or jaded amusement… was focused on the pool. That's why nobody noticed when something strange happened to John Tracy's unconscious body. Took only an instant and the faintest sparkle of something green… the reactivation of a little-used implant… and then what had been a comatose body sprang gracefully upright. Unnoticed, he flowed to his feet. Jerked a weapon away from the nearest guard and then silently rendered the man senseless.

With no time left for anything fancy, he crossed directly to the officer's position, seized his right shoulder and whipped him violently around, snarling,

_"Conrad!"_


	9. 9: Hunting License

Sorry so late; I was dealing with swarming life bytes, in all their splendiferous glory. Edited, thanks Tikatu :)

**9: Hunting License**

_Tracy Island, nightfall-_

…And that was when hell burst its gates and let out for the night. But chaos didn't so much _erupt_ as flower and twine, putting multiple tendrils forth to snare the unwary.

The raiders' commanding officer jerked free of his assailant's grasp, stared at the other man for an instant, and then laughed.

"Metcalfe. Nice. Two birds with one shot."

His gun was in a snapped-down holster, though, and not quickly reached. Scarlet, in John Tracy's body, was armed with a stolen weapon. Better yet, he had almost immediate backup.

Scott's terse, military-clipped voice came over the men's headsets, giving what sounded like official (and quite contradictory) orders. Meanwhile, a certain geological survey probe, acting from quite far away, broadcast a shortcut, higher-dimensional signal which changed the pool's optical properties. For a very few minutes, Alan and Ricky's image was not _in_ the water, but several feet above it, bathed in green spotlights.

At nearly the same instant, a Coast Guard helijet roared and clattered onto the scene like a second, noisier sunset. Somebody shot first, and a dozen more guns replied in stuttering chaos. Flowerpots flew from a particular high balcony, nailing two gunmen before they knew what had happened. Bullets, bits of foliage, chips of tile and concrete and smoke grenades went flying. Shots _spanged_ off of walls and tables and living aircraft, alike, filling the air with hissing detritus.

The smartest thing for anyone… any _hostage…_ to do was to hit the ground. Jeff Tracy hit the water, instead; tearing away from his guards to leap into the pool after Alan and Ricky, swimming strongly for their remembered position.

In someone else's body, Paul Metcalfe was just a beat off perfection. Fast and strong, but no match for Conrad Lefkon. All he could do was risk John's life and buy time. He didn't shoot, as it wouldn't have done any good. Instead, recklessly, he physically grappled Captain Black, attempting to wrestle the man.

"Better… dive back into your bolt-hole, Conrad," the Spectrum agent snarled, over jet scream and shouting and gunfire. "Otherwise you might…_ (Uh!)_… be joining… the rest of… _(Urf!)_… these men… in prison or the… hospital!"

"I'll get out," Black snapped back, breaking his opponent's hold with a powerful shove. "And then I'll make a special trip just to visit your grave, and piss on it!"

He'd got his gun out and might have used it, but a newly arrived Gordon Tracy was a good enough marksman to shoot it out of his hand, while TinTin attempted to overwhelm him telepathically. A simple enough assault it was, aimed rather bluntly at Lefkon's visual cortex. All at once, blinded by searing color and terrible pain, Black couldn't see. Clawing at his blameless facemask, Conrad Lefkon turned and lurched off.

Metcalfe's time was nearly done, for John was beginning to waken. Thinking quickly, he leapt for a sliver of dark aircraft metal, willed some of his own energy into it, and then plunged the sliver, dagger-wise, into the base of Black's skull. Didn't kill him. Blocked movement and thought, is all, and sent Lefkon slamming full-length onto the pool deck, where only his face broke his fall.

Then the sky erupted in floodlights and engine roar and amplified voices.

_"Freeze!_ Lay down your weapons! You are under arrest by the United States Coast Guard… and, yeah… WASP. Anybody moves, wakes up in a cell!"

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_Later-_

That which was not yet quite John took a few moments to speak with a blanket-wrapped, shivering Jeff. The older man was suffering somewhat from delayed shock and emotion; not so much drinking his coffee, as warming his hands with it.

"Mr. Tracy," said Metcalfe, "you were luckier than you deserve. Anybody with fewer relatives and less fire-power would have been finished."

Jeff nodded numbly, watching Linda work on Penny and Mother. Elspeth Morgan (her eyes blackened and knuckles bloodied) had taken young Ricky, while Alan's hurts were being attended to by Gordon, TinTin and Fermat (after they'd driven away the WASP field medics).

"I plan to considerably beef up security," the CEO told his son's inhabitant. "But will _your_ people manage to keep Black under control?"

Metcalfe shrugged John's slender shoulders, saying,

"For awhile, at least. He can't be killed, Mr. Tracy… anymore than I can (and believe me, they've run the experiments to prove it). More than that, though, Spectrum needs him alive and talking. Those buried shards contain all of this world's leftover Mysteron-energy, sir. They could be a great power-source, or a horrible weapon. He knows where they are. He's used them to travel, and to charge up the start of a living, mechanical army. At some point, like it or not, we're going to _have_ to wake him up and start asking questions."

Jeff tried taking a sip of coffee, but his hands trembled, causing the dark, caustic fluid to slosh too much to be drunk. So, he talked, instead.

"Can't you just… jump into his head, like you did John's?" the CEO asked, watching Brains and Virgil collect, unload and pile weapons. Scott was still with the Coast Guard and WASP commanders, meanwhile, attempting to settle a turf-battle.

Said Scarlet, shaking John's head,

"No, Mr. Tracy, I can't. Your son has an implant which allows 2-way contact between his mind and available electronic equipment. My 'control signal' is being broadcast remotely, and will only work while he's unconscious. Hawking's idea, by the way. Tell him that, when he comes to. He'll be pleased to hear that the probes got involved. They've been friends for awhile."

Then, as the inevitable happened, and Metcalfe's consciousness began to be pushed from the body,

"Earth and Mars have gained a new kind of life-form, Mr. Tracy. There are more of these living machines around than you think, and John is the closest thing you have to an ambassador. Keep him nearby, and well-guarded. Ought to warn you, I guess, that Black has a definite, hard-wired hit list; the same one I've got. He means to kill you, along with your family and a great many other people."

Jeff blinked. Linda Bennett was headed over with Janie, looking exhausted, but pleased. He hadn't much time to speak freely.

"Wait a minute… _hit list?_ Both of you?" The battered CEO couldn't help stepping warily backward.

Metcalfe smiled at him, the expression quite warm on John's usually deadpan face.

"Yes, sir. Both of us. The difference is, I'm fighting mine, not embracing it. I'm…"

And then he was gone, leaving Jeff to deal with drifting gun-smoke, hurrying military types, his weary family and a very disoriented John.


	10. 10: From the Ashes

Hi, and thanks ED, Ship's Cat and Tikatu! Edits this evening, I promise. Edited again.

**10: From the Ashes**

_Tracy Island, that same wild, gusty night-_

John came around, regaining consciousness upright, and with half of a word in his mouth; the fading contrail of somebody else's conversation.

"I'm…"

_I'm what?_

Well, his damp and blanket-wrapped father was there, while the gun wasn't, so…

_I'm unarmed? I'm… really curious about what the hell just happened?_

Doctor Bennett figured in there, somewhere, along with a door (like the airlock, on Mars). Doctors and portals of _any_ sort seemed like a bad combination, leading to destructive interference with his thought processes. Yeah, so… Taking stock, he was outside on the pool deck, at night, surrounded by busily-striding military sorts and double-parked aircraft, one of them pretty alien-looking. The wind stank of gunpowder and brassy spent shell-casings, along with chlorine and a little blood (some of it his). Still confused, John looked around.

A hasty count turned up four grown brothers, Grandma, two infants, his own wife and dad's… with Ike and Fermat, the servants and TinTin thrown in, too (no extra charge). It also turned up a headache, but Linda was coming with the baby and a med-kit, and possibly aspirin.

She'd been working as hard as he had to adjust to Earth gravity, but she still walked slower, and paused more frequently for rest; a short, intense and very… valuable? Very _important_ female. His wife.

In the midst of chaos and its aftermath, Linda had managed to kiss and embrace her blond husband and to sneak frequent looks at him; just to be sure he was safe. _Especially_ after that ridiculous stunt he'd pulled, attacking the gunmen's leader (Captain Black, himself, apparently). She'd worried about him. But other injuries, other patients, took precedence over one scuffed-up, bone-headed astronaut.

Junior twisted about in Linda's arms, reaching for her daddy with both outstretched hands, kicking and crowing delightedly. Dr. Bennett passed the child over, looking John up and down with a practiced eye. Beneath all those contusions and abrasions, his color wasn't good. Respiration seemed rather shallow and rapid, while a quick check at his left wrist revealed that his pulse was galloping along, too. Gravity effects, maybe, or…

"Come sit down for awhile, John. You aren't feeling well, whether you realize it, or not. Mild shock, most likely."

A kiss followed her unofficial diagnosis; John leaning down to brush his mouth against her forehead, leaving a warm and tingling spot that wasn't at all professional. But her father-in-law stirred at Linda's medical advice, frowning slightly.

"Linda, if you can wait just a moment, I'd like to speak to my son."

She cocked a brown eyebrow at him, and began fiddling with her portable med-kit.

"Isn't that exactly what you've been _doing_ for the last fifteen minutes, Jeff? Besides, from the look of things, your wife and mother are about to wake up, and they'd probably appreciate your presence at the, er… bedside. Poolside. Whatever."

Battle and triage had left her a little bit rattled. Fortunately, Jeff didn't need any further persuading, and shot off like his famous, long-ago moon rocket, thrusting a mug of unwanted coffee at her. Sheer good luck, the fact that she didn't get drenched.

Anyhow, her exhausted husband was quite amenable to having a seat and a check-up, planting himself in the least shot-up patio chair they could find, baby on lap. She got more kisses than examination done, and was mildly disturbed to learn that, once again, major bits of John's memory were gone. He didn't even recall tackling Captain Black. One such fugue was unusual; two were alarming, especially considering his "school history".

"I'm no psychiatrist, Sunshine," she told him, after checking his reflexes and bilateral grip strength, "but I've developed a theory about these blackouts of yours. Want to hear it?"

He nodded, pale hair shining like ice in the harsh floodlights.

"Fire away, doctor."

(Another kiss, quick, like the others; delivered when he thought no one but the baby could see.)

"Okay, here it is: I don't think you know how to let yourself take risks or show courage. I think the only way you can do something that foolish is by having an out-of-body experience. Bracketing the whole thing and sealing it away. Like it?"

John shrugged a little. Maybe she was right about the second occasion, but, as for the first… He didn't feel like explaining "Mr. Perfect" to her, just then. What had happened on Mars was over, plain and simple. It could damn well stay buried.

"Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess… but I'm not talking to any more flight surgeons, present company excepted. No more psychiatrists, no more counselors, no more Rorschach tests. Period."

Then, changing the subject,

"Will Grandma be all right?"

Linda paused in passing her med-kit's scanning wand over daughter and husband.

"I think so, John. She's pretty tough, but I recommend a night at the hospital, anyhow, just in case that stun-grenade has unintended side effects. And the same for 'her ladyship'."

Glancing at the med-kit screen, Linda added,

"According to Dr. Portable, here, you're in reasonably good shape, and I love you."

John craned his head to look at the small yellow screen, which didn't seem to have rendered any emotional evals, at all. He had to shift the baby when Linda sat herself down on his lap. Say what you would about females... like wildflowers, they had a way of taking root and brightening their surroundings.

"Well," he said, "I guess someone has to. Love me, that is. It can't be an easy job."

She laughed at him.

"Mister, you have no idea. Say: _I love you, too._ It'll make me feel good."

John smiled.

"I love you, Doctor."

_"And_ Junior."

"Her, too."

She sighed and rested her head against his chest, while Janie batted happily at both parents. Duty called, however. Dr. Bennett had too many patients that night to fall asleep on her husband's lap. Anyhow, they were interrupted when Gordon came forward with a uniformed WASP officer.

"John… Linda… Commander Garrett t' see you. Sir, my brother, John Tracy, and his wife, Dr. Bennett. The little one is by way of being their daughter, Janeling."

Linda hopped off, blushing like she'd been caught in the storage locker with a half-clothed and randy young tech-rep. John was smoother, but then, he hardly ever got visibly upset. Handing Janie off to her doting Uncle Gordon, he stood up and said,

"What can I do for you, Commander?"

The officer gave him a tight, perfunctory smile.

"Mr. Tracy, I'm given to understand that you have a way with machines. The human prisoners have all been taken into custody, you see, while most of the, uh… non-standard aircraft have lit off for parts unknown. But _that_ one…" he jerked a thumb over one shoulder at the only Cyclops craft remaining. "…we don't know how to communicate with, or board. Think you could give it a try, Mr. Tracy?"

"John," the astronaut corrected mildly, looking over at a bullet-riddled and silent black aircraft. "Mr. Tracy's my father. And, yeah… I'll give it a go. What the hell, huh?"

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_At the other side of the pool deck, seated much nearer the house-_

Alan should have been pleased by all the attention. He was a genuine family hero, now; 100 percent and officially. Instead, all he felt was nervous and depressed, in a _"can we please not talk about this"_ kind of way. No surprise there, right? Like… it was impossible to relax or joke around when, every time you closed your eyes, all you could see was dang gun barrels and green floodlights.

For real, in the end, he hadn't saved anybody, just made extra weight for dad to drag out of the water. Jeff Tracy was the real hero… like Gordon, Scott, Virgil and John. Alan was just a squishy-damp kid with his tooth in his pocket and plenty of bruises. On the other hand…

Alan squinted at TinTin, haloed like one of those Christmas card angels by glittering spotlights, her hair loose and her soft hands comforting. It _was_ kind of nice being fussed over by TinTin Kyrano. A guy could get used to that, y'know?

Maybe she heard what he was thinking, and maybe Alan didn't care if she did. In fact… maybe he wanted her to.

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Most of the prisoners had been packed into the helijets for transport to Spectrum HQ, when a small VTOL jet arrived for Dr. Hackenbacker. Besides the pilot and four grim-faced Marines, there was a government official aboard: one Gloria Beckwith. Medium sort of woman. Medium height, average build, hair of a texture and color that defied categorization simply for being so… unexceptional. Eyes maybe grey or fawn brown, but in any case widened by her severe, rimless spectacles. Clothing tan, and as near to a uniform as anyone could manage who wasn't in military service. Apparently devoid of humor as the Mojave Desert was of tapirs and ocelots.

"Dr. Hackenbacker?" she enquired, upon reaching the pool deck. Being that Tracy Island was all at once Grand Central Station, her advent and question shocked no one at all. Virgil Tracy was nearest at the time, so he gestured with the glowing end of a bummed cigarette and said,

"Over there. Tall, skinny guy with dark hair and glasses. Can't miss him."

Miss Beckwith's face registered taut disapproval at the cigarette's drifting fumes and sharp, clove-y tang.

"Thank you," she snapped, nodding frigidly. "That will be all."

And then she headed across the pool deck, trailing Marines like so many camo ducklings.

Virgil looked down at himself. Okay… he was scruffy, shirtless, powder-burnt and smoking a really bad cigarette… but did he look _that_ disreputable? Nah… just comfy, the former athlete decided. Beat up and worn-in, like a favorite old sweatshirt, or lucky socks. Shrugging, he turned back to the Coast Guard officer who'd been taking his statement.

"Anyway," Virgil continued, "about then we heard gunshots, and Scott figured we ought to…"

Beckwith found Hackenbacker, just as easily as that slovenly gardener-sort had predicted she would. Her news… that the World President wished to speak with him in person, _immediately_… did not please the man, who seemed to be a jittery, stuttering bundle of angles and nerves.

"B- But I'm, ah… I'm n- needed here, Ms. Beckford."

"Beck_with,"_ she corrected, standing back far enough to look at the man without having to noticeably crane her head. "Gloria Beckwith, GS-4, of the World Government Requisitions Ministry, in Madrid. The matter is urgent and secret, Dr. Hackenbacker, or I would not have been sent here in quite such a hurry. The President wishes to speak with you."

Beckwith took out her smart-phone, glanced at its clock feature, and then added,

"I can allow you thirty-five minutes to assemble a carry-on bag and return to this spot, but that is all, Dr. Hackenbacker. The President must not be kept waiting."

The engineer twitched, plucking at his clothing, calculator and PDA. In the end, he agreed to go, so long as Fermat came with him. Too much had happened recently for Hiram Hackenbacker to lightly part with his son.

Jeff and the rest were worried about their safety on the long flight to Madrid… but it wasn't Brains' transport that was attacked and destroyed en route. It was the press flight chartered by Cindy-Taylor Tracy. No distress call, no survivors.


	11. 11: Understanding

A little bit more. Thank you for your reviews, ED and Mitzy. I promise very soon to reply.

**11: Understanding**

_Tracy Island, near midnight-_

He didn't comprehend his own feelings very well, much less anyone else's, but three things that John Tracy _did_ get were machines, code and most of his family. That night, urged onward by the WASP commander, he'd approached a black, roughly ovoid aircraft; a living thing, believe it or not. Alive… but abandoned and injured. Its green Cyclops eye had shrunk to a gleaming pinprick, and there was no sign at all of a hatch or boarding stairs. Just bullet-pocked metal and that lone, glittering light.

The trapped (_impounded_?) craft was about the size of a twin-engine business jet, he figured, or would have been, in "normal" mode. Right now the entity resembled nothing so much as a black basalt cobble, worn smooth by the passage of weather and time.

Around him, booted feet clattered, and voices snapped orders. The wind worried and tugged at everything in its path, swiping like a counterman with a freshly-wrung rag. But John's attention remained on the injured mechanism. He'd requested a PDA (his own being back at the room suite) and used it now to attempt contact. After all, as Fermat had told them, there were only so many ways to encode basic truth, and the emissions spectra of hydrogen, the first 101 prime numbers and the relative dimensions of a sphere were universal.

On the PDA's little keyboard, John tried all of the usual languages, then shifted on impulse to dialect; using a particularly slang-y meld of FORTRAN and machine code he'd picked up from Hawking and Kip, back on Mars.

_Something_ clicked, because all at once the injured prisoner quivered, expending green energy to produce a single, stubby antenna. Thus linked, they sent a few signals back and forth, setting characters, variables and transmission rate. It was weirdly like learning a foreign language by communicating in whispers and taps with a jittery drunk guy in the next bathroom stall over. _Girl,_ that is. _She_ was a female, or receiver-emitter.

Aloud, to the waiting commander (and Ike) John said,

"She's lost energy and sustained a lot of damage. In order to repair herself, she needs raw materials. Metals, carbon, plastic… that kind of thing."

Commander Garrett scowled; his brows drawing together and mouth flattening, an expression John was reasonably familiar with.

"Wait a moment, please. I'll have to get clearance," said the officer, in a voice that didn't match his _'not a chance'_ face and _'hell__ no'_ posture.

Confused by the mismatch, John looked over at Brains, but a cadre of WorldGov officials had showed up, and Ike was soon called away. No more translations from _that_ quarter. Garrett, meanwhile, seemed to be damn well dragging his feet.

Another help request joined the one already flashing on the screen of John's borrowed PDA. The prisoner was fading before his eyes; literally bleeding to death. Well, John had no green energy to offer her, but he could and did drag up a wrecked patio table and several wrought iron chairs, all of which he shoved through an opening she made in her flank.

Upset Commander Garrett rather badly, to judge by the man's language, but Garrett couldn't order a halt. The Tracys were wealthy eccentrics, and this was _their_ island. WASP and the Coast Guard were the guests here, not John. Up to a point, he could do as he liked.

Once she'd got her repair materials ingested, John coded another message, bidding her shift into safe mode. When the aircraft went entirely dark, Garrett put away his military-issue cell phone and snapped,

"What'd you do? Turn the damn thing off?"

John shook his blond head, _no_.

"I suggested that she power down, commander, in order to save energy. I promised her she wouldn't get hurt."

"_Hurt_?" Garrett stared at him, facial muscles twitching wildly. "Are you _kidding_ me? This is a Mysteron assault ship! It's part of the reason your daddy's little island got invaded in the first place. Considered one-hundred percent hostile until proven otherwise! _Hurt_…!" Garrett repeated, shaking his close-cropped head. "Mister, once I figure out a way to get this thing wrapped up and transported, it's heading straight for the Spectrum test labs!"

The wind didn't change, but John felt cold, anyhow. He'd _promised._ He'd lured a confused and willing-to-cooperate machine into believing that some of the target organics could be trusted. No matter that John had been used, himself. What would she think, once she awoke to find herself in an armored, underground testing facility? Worse yet, how would her escaped fellows react?

It wasn't long afterward that John heard other, more devastating, news.

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_Some time later, at the airstrip-_

The day had dawned bright and rain-washed, lovely as only a morning in the tropics can be. The Pacific Ocean roared its eternal challenge to sea and sky, bit by bit pounding rock into sand, undercutting the already cave-pocked cliffs. A soft wind fluttered amiably here and there, ruffling the flowers and foliage as though nothing whatever was wrong.

Scott Tracy was a strong young man, because anything else would have placed the burden of leadership on John's shoulders, or Virgil's. There was only so much internalizing you could do, however. And increasingly less you could say in response to all the sympathetic words and kind pats. So, he decided to fly. Dangerous or not, he decided to get as far and fast as he could. And "where to" didn't matter one damn little bit.

So he took an electric cart from the mansion (under repair) to the airstrip (newly resurfaced). Parked the cart against a driftwood wheel-stop, gravel crunching as he coasted into the dappled, swaying shade of a tall jacaranda. Little things… turning and pocketing the key, stepping up out of that cart… took monstrous effort. But Scott kept moving, because that's what Tracys _did_. Squared their shoulders and carried on, no matter what.

Pressing a button-remote on his key-ring caused the hangar's white double doors to roll open, and a plane (nose-wheel in trolley) to slide forth. All of this Scott Tracy observed without visible emotion, his handsome face calm and composed. Well… frozen corpses look peaceful, too, don't they?

There was further movement in the hangar, though; a pair of lurking shadows which resolved themselves into Virgil and John. Scott folded both arms across his broad chest, creasing a brand-new white cotton shirt. He wasn't angry, or even surprised. Before, he might have smiled at the sight of muscular Virgil and whisper-slim John. Now, numb clear through, he just waited.

They crossed the tarmac toward him, John with his hands in his jeans pockets, not making eye-contact, Virgil firm and direct as a prize-fighter's clenched fist.

"Hey, Scott," Virgil greeted him, once they'd drawn near. "Going someplace?"

Their older brother managed a shrug, directing himself from what felt like the bottom of a cold, dark well.

"Thought I'd go for a flight," he said, quietly.

"Sounds good," Virgil replied. "Mind if we join you?"

"Why?" countered Scott.

John stopped examining the leaf-strewn ground, looking up long enough to say,

"Because you're less likely to ignore your fuel and altitude gauges with us along."

Scott should have been angry, but instead was just… nothing. Just empty.

"I didn't ask for company," he told them, sounding distant and thin as a band of high clouds. Cirrus, he thought... or strato-cirrus.

"Too bad," Virgil answered. "You got some, anyway. Nothing John and me like better than an early morning flight. Right, Johnny?"

"I could use an outing," admitted the astronaut, eyes flicking restlessly, everywhere else but at Scott.

Long and the short of it was, his two younger brothers got into the plane with Scott Tracy, who didn't feel like arguing, didn't feel like returning to the house… didn't feel like _breathing._ But scar tissue is frequently nerveless, whether inside the body or out.

Once in the cockpit, Scott took the left seat, John the right. Virgil strapped in behind them, looking grim as a judge. Looking worried. Like an automaton, Scott fired up the Lear's engines and triggered release of the nose-wheel trolley, then taxied his plane onto the main airstrip.

Jets make a thousand characteristic noises; an orchestra of beeps and clicks, radio hisses and engine howls that to Scott's mind equaled freedom. Freedom _to_, and (more importantly) freedom _from._ All he had to do now was throttle up and go, but for some reason, he said,

"I need a drink."

John's white-blond head swiveled. Over the noise of engines and airframe, he said,

"There's beer in the refrigerator, Scott, but only if I do the flying."

Scott Tracy hesitated, while everything… all the thoughts and goodbyes and feelings he'd refused to let out… hung twisting on a single, very long thread, down that same hollow well with his sucked-dry remains.

"Fine," he said at last, passing flight control over to the right-seat instrument and yoke assembly. Virge got the beer, two bottles exactly, both of which he handed to Scott.

John called in to Gordon for flight clearance. Got it, too. (Their dad was away, still; explicating TA's laundered finances for a WorldGov auditing squad.) John thanked the "tower", and then throttled up, sending their Lear screaming along the tarmac with cliff and jungle on one side, ocean at the other. The scenery picked up speed and shot past their windows. Then the nose-wheel lifted, and their plane sprang from the ground like a freed raptor. Vibration eased, all but vanishing once the landing gear was safely folded inside. Meanwhile, their shadow shrank away to nothing beneath them, dropping behind with the jewel-toned island and booming sea.

"Where to?" said John, after he'd leveled off at 20,000 feet and gotten his instrument bearings.

Scott was well into his second bottle by that point. He didn't answer, at first. Then, staring hard at curved green glass and a silvery label, he said,

"We could fly over… where it happened. Have a look around."

Not very clear, maybe, but his brothers understood what Scott meant. Virgil reached forward to grasp and squeeze Scott's shoulder, while John began punching coordinates for the site of… Well, where Cindy's press flight had been attacked and brought down, several hundred miles to the north-northeast. No activity had been reported in the region since, but the trip remained hazardous.

He flew, Scott drank, and Virgil kept the beers coming, remarking once in awhile on fairly ordinary stuff. Home and ranch and family things. Memories and connections, to which John at times added his bit. They were a close-knit threesome, if not much demonstrative. But sometimes, friendship isn't measured in hugs; sometimes it's measured in _being_ there. Filling up the silence and drawing off pain.

They reached the spot after awhile. John didn't have to make any announcements. He simply banked the plane, causing the Lear to cut a wide, tilting arc over a certain patch of deep and restless water. The engines changed pitch and everyone hung sideways in their seat-straps, but John held position, circling as slowly as possible.

Scott said nothing aloud. But it was probable that he let go just a little and let in thoughts of the dead: hand pressed against the left window pane, eyes on the sea. That (in his mind) he spoke to a very pretty smart-ass reporter, talking about love and longing and pain. All the things he'd wanted for her… for the both of them. Kids and life and happiness. How he'd missed her. Would go on missing her, all the rest of his days.

Possibly he started to shake a little, but Virgil reached over once more to seize his shoulder; a grasp Scott responded to by clasping his brother's hand, while John kept on flying the plane. Because his two closest friends were there to help, Scott Tracy pulled himself out of a well, that day. And then, they flew home.


	12. 12: Sowing Dragon's Teeth

Thanks ED and Mitzy, for your reviews of 11. Here's a little bit more, to be edited soon. Still studying, as I've got into the habit and can't think what else to do.

**12: Sowing Dragon's Teeth**

The thirteen shards had eluded detection for some time by slipping beneath layers of dense, heavy rock, and by dampening their own energy signatures. Captain Black had been caught and subdued… locked in the deepest hazmat crypt that Spectrum could locate… but the pieces of his escape ship had not.

They were out there, still, positioning themselves. Making ready. Captain Scarlet remained at large, as well. After taking a hand in the defense of Tracy Island, he'd gone to ground, again, leaving nothing behind but confusion and rumors.

Desperate to find him, Spectrum officials instituted round-the-clock surveillance of Simone Girardoux and the home of his elderly parents in Boise, Idaho. Sooner or later, they reasoned, he'd visit his folks or the beautiful woman he loved. (Just like the surviving astronauts, Paul Metcalfe had been put through a high-stress wringer of mental and physical exams upon reaching Earth. In Scarlet's case… testing the limits of his supposed "immortality"… they'd done their level best to kill the poor man. A pregnant Linda Bennett had received the least harsh treatment, while her husband and the other male astronauts fared only slightly better than Metcalfe.) Spectrum, "the Sword-Arm of WorldGov", could not afford to be patient. _Or _kind.

They'd taken delivery of a powered-down living machine; one of several planes involved in the attack on Tracy Island. A Commander Garrett had captured and switched off the infected craft, which represented a gem-studded platinum mine of potential information. Information they planned to extract using any means necessary.

Even so, with machine-attacks increasing all over the world and Moon, it was beginning to look as if they'd no choice but to wake and interrogate Conrad Lefkon, Captain Black.

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_Elsewhere, traveling-_

Brains and Fermat were kept in a windowless section of the WorldGov transport craft. Once scanned for illicit tracking devices and robbed of their electronics (which wouldn't have functioned anyhow, thanks to John) they'd been shown to their "guest cabin", served drinks and a light snack, and then left strictly alone.

Fermat fell asleep almost immediately, stretched out on a comfortable reclining seat, listening to engine noise; lulled by his father's work-mode grumbling and pencil scratches. Dr. Hackenbacker was an inveterate doodler and sticky-note scrawler. He differed in that respect from John Tracy, who thought best in stillness and silence, with blond head lowered and arms folded across his thin chest, peering steadily inward.

Sometime in the night, they landed. Fermat couldn't tell _where,_ because his father shook him quietly awake, after which he was fed and allowed to visit the plane's lavatory, and then blindfolded. Ms. Beckwith's voice greeted them outside the aircraft, once they'd been guided down a boarding ramp and onto what felt like gritty tarmac. There was a light breeze stirring the chilly, fuel-scented air. Other than that… Fermat heard more night-sounds than voices (insects, not tree-frogs) and no ocean, at all. _Inland,_ he thought, _out in the country and higher or lower in latitude._

Ms. Beckwith snapped a few directions; telling his father that they were not to speak or attempt to remove their blindfolds, as any effort to do so would result in their being tranquilized and then hauled like the mail. Fermat nodded in response and pressed a little closer to his dad, whose comforting hand had never left the boy's shoulder.

Next, they were guided into a land vehicle of some kind, fairly tall (Fermat did not have to duck his head to enter). Once inside, when the engine purred to life and they'd been scanned again for devices, the two Hackenbackers were permitted to remove their blindfolds and make themselves comfortable.

Here, again, they found themselves in a windowless but relatively pleasant leather-paneled enclosure. Too large for a limousine, Fermat decided, keeping his thoughts to himself, but hardly tour-bus sized. A van or panel-truck, possibly? Whatever, Ms. Beckwith was clearly taking great pains to ensure that Dr. Hackenbacker was not seen, nor had any idea where he was being conducted.

A small refrigerator unit contained juice and soda pop from an eclectic mix of nations. Fermat sampled all of them, together with a bag of five-spice edamame. Better yet, there was strawberry Pocky. Fermat ate while his father continued to mutter and work, every so often patting his pockets absent-mindedly for the long-gone PDA. Wanting consultation with John Tracy, most likely.

No luck on that score (fortunately, for John) and Hackenbacker was meanwhile very careful not to speak to his brilliant son in any _collegial_ manner, keeping WorldGov's suspicious attention focused on himself, alone. He spoke like a father, giving no hint that Fermat had been involved in deciphering the alien code or hacking Black's escape ship.

It was during this nowhere ride, while his father scribbled, grunted, got up to switch seats and ran both hands through his lank brown hair, that Fermat conceived a cunning plan.

_Why not,_ he thought to himself, gnawing on Pocky, _contact the Discovery Adventure Team, and offer a deal?_ His data and hacking expertise in return for access to any "mystic green shards" he helped them to find. All he needed to do was arrange a way to contact… what's his name… Farrell Cummings (not hard at all; the team's chief scientist twittered and blogged incessantly) and convince him that a 13-year-old school boy was worth doing business with.

Fermat had to stifle his own excitement at the thought, lest his father or their conductors notice. He was just a passenger… just a nobody… a kid riding along with his dad, that's all. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Eventually, the vehicle slowed down; seeming to descend some sort of long, gradually sloping, and gently curved incline. You could hide a lot of things by cutting off someone's vision, but acceleration would come through, regardless. Speed change and turns… these could not be concealed, thanks to Newton and inertia.

Dr. Hackenbacker looked up and around, and then began nervously gathering his pencils, pens and paper scraps. Fermat helped him, trying very hard to seem appropriately kid-like. (Alan made a pretty good model, there.) The vehicle stopped moving a few minutes later.

_"We're here," _Ms. Beckwith's voice announced sharply, making them jump. _"The doors will open presently, gentlemen, at which time you may exit the vehicle."_

"R- Right," Brains responded, looking in vain for the hidden speakers responsible for that drifting, directionless voice. "Will, ah… will do."

Then, holding a hand out to his son,

"Are y- you ready, Fermat?"

The boy took his father's proffered hand and gave it a quick, unselfconscious squeeze.

"Y- Yes, dad. I am," he said, just before the doors opened to a huge and echoing underground chamber. "W- We got this."

__________________________________________________

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Tracy Island, a bit later-_

TinTin Kyrano faced a very important decision, one which made rest and focus nearly impossible. The very next day, Gordon would leave Kanaho to rejoin his crewmates aboard Mako. Cruise length and destination highly classified, and undoubtedly hazardous.

Her trouble was this: ought she… would it be correct… should… _shouldshehavesexwithhim?_

Away in her room, staring at her own pale, pretty reflection in an oval vanity mirror, TinTin bit her lip, begging God and his Saints for understanding and forgiveness. She was by now deeply and painfully in love with Gordon David Tracy; with his broad, freckled shoulders and explosive laugh. His hazel eyes and the dear bump on that twice-broken nose. The way he sometimes caught her up and whirled or tossed her, for the sheer joy of it. The warm, humor-spiked buzz of his mind against hers. In short, very much she wished to give the red-haired young man the truest gift of a loving, committed heart. But…

Suddenly nervous, TinTin took an ornate silver brush from the vanity's crowded top, and then commenced brushing her long, black hair. Would it… Would it not be wrong, a _sin_, to lie down with him thus? And, beyond that, even…

Could she safely come so near, mingling their thoughts utterly? Would she perhaps lose control in the midst of…? _(Deep blush)_ …and harm him? TinTin might have asked Gordon, himself, but she did not think that he would give to the matter serious thought. He was all heart and strength, humor and courage, her young man. For him, danger was a thing to be dared and laughed at, not feared. He would call her "angel" and embrace her, saying that all would be well. And… curled near to such bold and confident warmth… she would believe him.

And how might anyone number the days which remained to them? Had not poor, grieving Scott expected a long life with Cindy, his wife? Had TinTin not heard him, in the supposed secrecy of his heart, mourning time and opportunities lost? Little ones never to be? His quiet sorrow was very deep, and it had affected the girl, who could not help but overhear.

The thought… what if Gordon were taken, lost at sea in one of those ever-mounting machine attacks… tormented her greatly, adding to TinTin's shy, confused yearning. There was no mother to speak with but Mary, who would surely disapprove. Grandmother Tracy might think her wicked and grasping, a… a… "digger of gold". And Lady Penelope? Mais non! Her Ladyship was too fine and honorable for such doings. TinTin had rather face a firing squad, than be disgraced in Lady Penelope's eyes.

What then, the girl wondered, was she to do? Certainly, nothing on the vanity desk held answers; not her jars and boxes of scented silk powders, her flowers or lip-tints. But a framed picture of Gordon shifted digitally as she watched, passing from uniformed portrait to pool-side athlete, and then to Olympic champion… ending with a simple shot of the two of them, hand-in-hand by the shore.

"Je t'aime," she whispered to his image. And then someone knocked twice at her door.


	13. 13: Undertow

Not at all short, this time. Thanks ED, Mitzy and Tikatu. Small but vital edit.

**13: Undertow**

_Spain, leaving the WorldGov Finance Ministry in a limousine, after a particularly grueling audit session-_

Jeff Tracy was on the phone, having settled back against butter-soft leather, in a vehicle which smelt pleasantly of liquor, cigars and expensive cologne. The car windows had been programmed to one-way dimming mode, so that he could see the highway lights and e-billboards streaking by while maintaining a measure of privacy. Nice, but Jeff's mind was very much on Tracy Island, with his family.

He'd been talking to Scott; (for legal/financial and possible phone-tap reasons) about everything else but the badly-timed audit. He asked about his mother, for instance, and got:

_"She's divided the cooking chores with Louis and Kyrano, dad. Louis gets breakfast, Kyrano's got lunch, and Grandma fixes dinner."_

Inquiring after his granddaughter and youngest son brought:

_"Both up and crawling now, but Janie can beat Sprout in the stretch. She's quicker. Hit him over the head with her doll the other day, too. Penny didn't think it was funny."_

Jeff did. Smiling, he settled deeper into the comforting glove of his seat and said,

"I'll bet they're raising quite a ruckus, over there. _Two_ babies in the house at once…!" Working the kinks out of his neck with one big hand, Jeff added, "Just as soon as this damned inquisition is over with, I'm coming home, son. I need to touch my own soil and get back with the people I love."

But Scott said,

_"Maybe you ought to wait, dad. There have been several more… I mean, traveling's dangerous. People have been… they've, uh... died."_

Jeff sat up again and leaned urgently forward. Pitching his voice lower (so that the limousine's other two passengers could not easily hear him) he murmured,

"Believe me, son… I know how it feels. Like you've had something ripped out that can't ever be replaced. Keep busy. Keep moving. I'm serious. Find something important to do, and give it your goddam _all._ You've got to concentrate on just staying afloat, at first, then on swimming to shore… Scott? Is any of this…? I'm sorry, son. I'm probably the last person on earth you want a lecture from."

_"No, dad. It's okay. I appreciate it, really. I'll, um… get through this, honest. Actually just impatient for the damn bereavement leave to be up, so the Air Force'll let me fly again. I need to get back to work."_

Jeff's heart clenched. Scott sounded just like he had long ago, when reporting Rusty's death to a far away, mission-bound father.

"You're sure?"

_"Absolutely, sir. Like you always say… if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger; and I'm not dead."_ Just lost, robbed and stunned.

Jeff's hand tightened on the slim phone as he tried to find words. Finally, he said,

"Good man. Glad to hear it. Stay on top of things while you're in the area, Scott, and take care of yourself. Just as soon as we can, let's have dinner somewhere, and really talk."

_"Yeah. Sounds good, dad. Thanks."_

The conversation trickled to an end like so many others, and Jeff put his phone away. Albert Jenkins the Third handed him a much needed scotch-and-soda; ice cubes shimmering through pale amber fizz. Once he'd obviously organized his thinking, Leisha Bonaventure (all in New York black, severe and elegant as a prima ballerina) said,

"Your son is quite a strong and wonderful young man, Mr. Tracy." (Though not the one she'd slept with.) "I'm sure that he'll survive this loss. I have no personal experience with marriage, of course, but…"

_Er…_

Her grey eyes flashed for help to Al Jenkins' Hyannisport-royalty face. Ever helpful, the handsome blond executive caught and hauled in her line. Straining his words through his teeth, he said,

"We feel simply dreadful about this entire, unfortunate affair, old man. Positively awful, both of us, and dear Caroline, as well. The flowers arrived in time, I trust…?"

Jeff nodded silently, swirling his drink a little just to hear the comforting music of ice cubes on glass. Finished half in one gulp, and then set the remainder down in his seat's gold-rimmed cup holder.

"They made it, Al, and they were beautiful. Caroline's design, I take it?" (For Caroline Cabot-Jenkins, inspired by her beloved Bertie's success at TA, had begun dabbling in floral arrangement and pampered pet-wear.)

Albert beamed.

"Right you are, old top. Quite the 9-to-5 working girl, our Caroline. She'll be a captain of industry in her own right, soon. Buy us both out."

Jeff smiled and complimented the Cabot-Jenkins business sense. Two better matched people, Jeff had never met. Had Al and Caroline Jenkins not been married, he'd have thought them a set of blond, blue-blooded, old-money twins; one with a yippy black Pomeranian, the other with an actual _job._

An affectionately delivered invitation followed, summoning Jeff and Leisha, both, to the Jenkins family compound for Thanksgiving.

"Inclusive, naturally. Bring the clan and livestock. We've more space than we know what to do with. Caroline is quite seriously considering Segways for the help. Imagine! That rigid fossil, Ellsworth... buzzing about like one of those, er… those motorcycle gang chappies!"

A pleasant enough trip, all things considered. Eventually, however, their limousine arrived at the Maria-Theresa Executive Airport, where a helijet was waiting to take them to the private yacht of Stavros Valianatos; like Jim Springfield, a friend and ally… of sorts.

The flight was probably longer than it felt like. Jeff was too busy with stock reports and contractual fine-print to pay much attention to a little thing like moonlit Spain. Their descent through choppy air pulled him back out of the numbers and into reality. He had to strap in, for one thing, tuck his phone and Kindle away, for another.

Night rushed by and stars whirled. The helijet spiraled lazily downward, gentle as a pair of linked maple seeds. Amphitrite, Valianatos' grand yacht, rose up to meet them; sparkling with lights and bright-polished brass. The ocean lapping around Amphitrite glowed a soft, greenish-blue; illuminated for many yards around by this floating constellation. In and out of the bright-gleaming water, dolphins hunted and leapt, snatching fish that were drawn to the light. As Virgil would have put it, easy pickings. No challenge, at all.

Valianatos met them at the yacht's helipad. He was a big, swarthy, bear-like man, whose affable exterior concealed one of the sharpest, most cunning minds Jeff had ever encountered. Valianatos was a ruthless businessman, the CEO and prime shareholder of Omega Petrochemical.

Jeff disembarked from the whining, powered-down helijet. Then he smiled and shook the other man's hand, matching grip strengths precisely. Said Valianatos,

"Welcome, Jeff… everyone… to my little obsession. Welcome aboard. I only ask that you please cast business aside for the evening, and prepare to enjoy yourselves." Then, aside, "So sorry that the lovely Penelope can't be here tonight, Jeff. She is truly one of a kind."

Jeff smiled again and pumped Valianatos' hand.

"Thank you, Stavros. I have to agree with you, there; she's something special, all right." Then, turning to sweep an arm at the others, "You know Al Jenkins and, of course, my attorney, Leisha Bonaventure."

Valianatos nodded to Jenkins, then took the attorney's hand and bent low over it, the picture of old-world courtesy.

"Charmed," he said, almost sincerely. In his turn, Valianatos introduced the latest in a long string of vapid young blondes. (_He_ wore casual resort wear. She, a sequined red "do me" dress cut down to _there_ and a little bit past, just in case you'd failed to survey all the real estate.)

"Jeff… Albert… Leisha… this is Krist_al_."

Uh-huh. Everyone made nice and shook hands all around, behaving as though "Kristal" were more than just Ms. Flavor-of-the-Week. Afterward, they were conducted below decks to a giant mahogany and gold dining room. The big, airy chamber featured plenty of ivory damask, sparkling crystal, sterling silver utensils, delicate porcelain and exquisite food. A live string quartet performed behind a pierced satin screen, playing something very soft and beautiful. Servants flitted from galley to table like butterflies; never in the way, always around when wanted.

Conversation began once Valianatos had offered his personal condolences on the attacks, and the Tracys' recent loss. Jeff must've been ruminating. In the mood to talk, because he said,

"It's strange… Cindy was one of those people you either loved or hated. No middle ground. We'd had a few run-ins, you see, and I was half-convinced that her courtship of Scott was part of a sting operation. That she was trying to get an 'in', if you know what I mean… laying the groundwork for some sort of Tracy Island exposé. Turns out she actually loved him, though. Turns out I was wrong. Again."

Said Bonaventure, draining the last of her wine and raising the glass for a refill,

"Only the Pope is infallible, Mr. Tracy, and then only part of the time. The rest of us have to make our own damn decisions, and try to live with the results. That's life."

Kristal, who'd been working up the nerve to speak for quite some time, squealed,

"OMG! Shut _up! _You are _so_ right! I was just the other day watching this show… you know the one… and there was this guy, like a detective, and he says to this other guy, "Decision time, Sweetheart. What's it gonna be?" All tough, just like that. And then he hits him, but _he_ gets up and pulls a gun, only this other-other guy… I didn't mention him, before… was, all like _"Urghhh!"_ And then…"

Valianatos leaned over to casually pat the girl's hand, saying,

"Darling, why don't you head on up to the pool and get yourself a moon-tan. Flirt with the cabin boy, or something. Adults are speaking."

Kristal blushed as red as her dress, pouting extravagantly. Then she lurched to her feet with a dramatic chair push-back and stomped from the room. Albert had been quietly attending to his dessert, Leisha to her third glass of red wine, but Jeff shook his grey head, muttering,

"Stavros…"

"I know, I know," the oil magnate agreed ruefully. "But I've never been able to resist a pretty face and empty head. Great taste, less filling, as it were."

Bertie coughed gently. Then he turned to engage Leisha in conversation more appropriate to a lady; much as he hoped another would do, were his Caroline placed in a similar situation.

After dinner, farewells were tendered. Valianatos escorted the three of them back to his yacht's helipad. Hands were shaken and pleasantries exchanged (though Stavros did not get an invitation to the family compound, being "not quite our sort, don't y'know?")

They climbed aboard the helijet, ducking beneath lazily churning rotors. Valianatos waved and then retreated, after helping an icy Bonaventure to take her seat. The helijet's doors slammed shut on bracing sea air and night wind. Seconds later, while everyone was still rustling about, fiddling with buckles and straps, their pilot welcomed them aboard.

The engines screamed to life, then, as the rotors began slashing the air in dead earnest. With a sharp lurch, their helijet lifted from the pad, departing wedding-cake-and-fairy-lights Amphitrite. They'd reached 1000 feet, maybe 1500, when it happened. A wolf pack of dart-shaped projectiles rocketed from the depths, tearing into the yacht like machine-gun bullets. There must have been a hundred of them. First, as Jeff and the others watched helplessly, Amphitrite quivered and bucked, listing to port. Then she erupted beneath them, vanishing in a greenish-white fireball that blasted the helijet up and away like a bit of curling ash.

____________________________________________________

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Tracy Island, in TinTin's pink and cluttered little room-_

Startled, the girl set down her silver hairbrush and crossed the bedroom, mind shrinking tight within her skull from sheer confusion. She opened the door with an impolite jerk, to find Alan standing there, looking decidedly odd. There was a bit of pale fuzz on his face, as though he'd decided to grow a moustache. The tooth was back (laser-fused in) and the earring gone (for good, hopefully). Enter Alan Rivers Tracy, in the perpetually annoying flesh.

"Hey, um… Hi there, T. Could I come in for a sec? I'd like to talk to you, if that's, like… I mean, if that's okay."

TinTin's head cocked to one side. He was making an effort to sound more mature, it seemed. She did not respond, at first; clinging to the glass knob as though wondering whether she ought to slam the door in his face. Then, stuffing emotions away like sloppy shirttails, TinTin nodded and stepped aside to let him in. Alan ducked nervously past her, crossing the room to take a seat on her vanity-desk chair (a thing of delicately curved brass and pink velvet cushions). TinTin perched at the very edge of her neatly-made bed, catching up a blue teddy bear to hug.

"Oui, mon enfant," she began. "What may I do to assist you? Provide a basin and razor? Or perhaps a bed-time story, as Scott is occupied with reading online for the class of… of…"

TinTin bit her lip and fell silent. Scott Tracy's decision to complete his wife's community service was not to be made light of, she knew. Reading aloud to Miss Bing's class had brought a measure of comfort to children and widower, both. So she said,

"How may I be of assistance to the young master?"

Alan flushed angrily and shot to his feet.

"TinTin, cut it out, okay? You're not a servant! You're father just works here. And as far as helping me goes, you can't. I just came by to tell you something important, okay? So… yeah. Here it is: I'm kinda sorta maybe in love with you, but… Don't look at me like that! I'm not crazy! I mean it. I know you got this thing for Gordon… Heck, if I was a chick and not, like, _related_, I guess I would, too. I mean, he's a pretty cool guy, when he's not throwing punches. But I got to thinking… why him and not me? Why would T fall for Mr. Swim-trunks-and-steroids? Just jokes!" Alan assured her, backing hastily up, hands raised, as his scalp began ominously tingling. "I know he doesn't juice up, T! After all that gene-doping, he doesn't _have_ to. And, just think, if you two get married and have kids, your babies 'll all come out with psychic powers and hairy chests."

_"Alain!"_

A headache, like an eye-popping head-squisher vise, began to clamp down on his skull.

"Sorry! My bad! Ease off, T, _please?_ I'll be good. And don't send me to the bathroom, either. _Ever_ again. I hate that!"

The headache faded, but TinTin was still suspicious, hunched round that faded old teddy bear like it could offer protection, or something. That was all right, though, because Alan had a case to make, and lots of determination.

"Okay, so… if I haven't ruined everything yet, here goes: I just figured that if I love you (kinda, maybe) and I want you to love me back, then I've got to be someone you could… I dunno… _respect._ Make sense? Someone worth someone like _you._ So, that's it. I'm gonna change, T. Starting today. For real. This is, like, the dawn of a whole new Alan. _Alan Part Deux: The Sequel."_

From the doorway came the sound of sudden applause.

"Oh, well done. Bravo. Stand the first round of tickets, I will."

_Gordon._ TinTin startled like a fawn. Alan pivoted to face the threshold and almost fell, tripped by one of TinTin's dang area rugs. He expected another fight, but Gordon came right in and offered his hand, shake-wise. A second passed before Alan accepted the hand and shook it.

There was distinct, chewy tension in that pink little room, especially when TinTin slid quietly up to take Gordon's arm. Alan flushed, then grew pale again. Deeply miserable, he nodded at them both and left the room.

Once he was gone, Gordon looked at TinTin, who dropped her gaze, trembling just a bit. Said Gordon, brushing a long, silken strand from her perfect face,

"All that foolishness aside, he's quite a pleasant lad… once one gets past all th' jokin' about. Alan, that is t' say. Be taller than I am, most like, once he's attained his full growth. Blond, too. I'm told that th' lassies fancy a blond. Doesn't curse, smoke or drink. No bad habits t' break him of, no former relationships t' make him f'rget. I could certainly understand why a lass might…"

"Gordon, tais-toi!" TinTin snapped, pressing herself very closely against him. "Mon Coeur, I know all of this, just as I know what… who… it is that I truly want."

Indeed she did. Words were unnecessary when her thoughts might touch his, allowing Gordon Tracy to see himself as she did; bold and heroic and altogether wonderful.

More, this touch revealed the question which had so troubled her. The one about him… or _them,_ rather. Softly, Gordon kissed her face and long neck in many places. Then he pulled away just a bit to say,

"Only if y'r ready, luv. Only if you want to."

She did. Very much.


	14. 14: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Dang, the title's almost longer than the chapter(let)! It means, roughly "Who watches the watchmen?" by the way.

**14: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?**

_Tracy Island, TinTin's room-_

Their kiss had deepened to something more breathless and probing. His hands shifted, but only to caress her slim, curving back. She was shaking; wanting, and very afraid to want, their minds blending further with each gulped breath and slight movement.

Then something rapped three times, hard upon the threshold; a cane's brass head against painted wood. Both of them jumped, separating like they'd been sprayed with a garden hose.

Looking wildly (_caught!_) across the room, they saw Grandma Tracy's small, erect figure. The old lady was just about breathing fire and summoning thunder.

"You," she snapped, pointing to Gordon. "Get on upstairs to your room! I'll be there directly to explain a few things that your daddy evidently ain't managed to get across, yet!"

"Right. Yes, ma'am," he replied glumly, wondering whether it wouldn't be safer to leave for Gamma Base, now; swimming, if need be. But then, casting a swift, concerned glance at TinTin, Gordon stood his ground and gathered the courage to say,

"Grandmother, I… I'm not playin' about, this time. I _love_ her."

Victoria's stance shifted, and her grim expression softened, ever so slightly.

"Maybe you do, maybe you don't, Red. It ain't always a feller's _heart_ that's in love, if you take my meaning."

Poking with her cane, Grandma began driving him toward the door.

"Go on, now. Git! _Shoo_!"

But…

"She's not in any trouble? I mean, you'll not scold her, surely? TinTin was… 'Tis entirely my fault, Grandmother. I lost m' head an' forced th' matter!"

The former Victoria Culver Spirit-Horse began to laugh.

"Sure you did. Just like a certain handsome young cowhand had 'a "force" me... back when I was a slim, pert little thing, and the fellers 'ud come from miles around, just to have a look. Get on outta here, Red. Believe it or not, I ain't gonna yell, and she ain't in no trouble. You, on the other hand, are fixin' to get yourself gelded with a butter knife!"

All of this time, poor TinTin had been shaking like an entire grove of aspen trees, gazing from Gordon to Grandma and back again. He truly _was _a hero; courageous even in the face of Victoria Tracy. TinTin ducked past the old lady's cane to join her young champion and kiss his sunburnt cheek.

"Go," she whispered (loving him with her soft dark eyes and a quick brush of the hand). "All is well. I would like very much to speak with Grandmere… but I thank you for trying to defend me, Mon Coeur…" (Another kiss) "…Mon Amour…" (A third, leaf-light, sunshine-warm) "…merci mille fois, et mille fois Je t'aime."

Victoria snorted rudely.

"He gets the picture, girl, and them hormones're about to come jetting straight outta his ears. Let him be, afore he up and explodes."

Shooting a very direct, stern look at Gordon, Grandma Tracy said,

"You, cold shower. Now!"

Then, swinging about on the stable tripod of cane and two legs, Victoria faced TinTin Kyrano.

"You, set yourself down. Time we had us another girl-to-girl talk."

And so the day had been saved. Here, at least.


	15. 15: No Refuge

**15: No Refuge**

_Somewhere else, somewhat earlier-_

Outside of their vehicle, scanners beeped and equipment rumbled. People were everywhere, striding about in the uniforms of many nations and services. Making a quick 360, Fermat saw long rows of high overhead lights and widely-spaced concrete pylons which gave the place the look of an underground parking lot. A very _big_ underground parking lot. The ramp they'd descended was just visible, curving away to the left like a stairway out of Sheol; where they eat clay and drink dust.

Their ride turned out to be a truck, after all; with electronically controlled paint and lettering that converted as he watched from Spanish bread-delivery to Australian nappy-service to German beer-wagon. In short, it could look like nearly anything, anywhere, and Fermat was no closer to figuring out where they were than he had been, before.

Ms. Beckwith had been talking to his dad, while a team of technicians performed yet another full-body scan. Suspicious bunch. But then, they were guarding the World President from imminent attack.

"She'll see you immediately, Dr. Hackenbacker," Beckwith was saying. "And she's requested that the boy come along, too. Try not to waste her time, please. If you know anything of use, for God's sake, _tell her._ Your price can be met, whatever it is."

Brains stiffened visibly. As often happened when upset, his voice slowed and his stutter abated.

"Miss Beckwith, I w- wasn't lured here by the promise of money. Old, ah… Old-fashioned as it m- may sound, I'm here because my nation and w- world need me, and because my son deserves a ch- chance to grow up. Now, I've about h- had enough of secrets and scanning. I've about h- had enough of _you._ Please, ah… please conduct me to the president, Miss Beckwith."

Well, amber-eyed Beckwith could match glacial stares with anyone, including a mere _engineer_. Saying not a word, she gave Hackenbacker a swift, jerky nod, spun on her heel and then flagged down one of the parking lot's ubiquitous transports. A long, camo tractor pulled up, drawing behind it a train of linked equipment carts.

"Ma'am?" the driver inquired cheerfully, head and one arm slung comfortably out the open side-window.

Beckwith strode forward, her heels clacking sharply on the hard concrete floor.

"Room for three passengers to the elevator-wall?" she asked him.

"Yes, ma'am. Hop on in!" he responded with a grin, reaching across to unlatch the passenger side door.

Ms. Beckwith glanced back at Fermat and Brains, and then turned to cross in front of the tractor's rumbling, fume-y grill, heading for the now open door. Hackenbacker gave his son's shoulder a quick squeeze, and then followed her. They had to climb to reach the tractor's elevated cab, but the driver put a hand out to help them up and inside.

"Watch your step, there… that part's a little slippery… there you go!" And then, "Welcome aboard," he greeted them, patting the dashboard. "I'm Sergeant Collins and this is BUFF. Buffy, once you get to know her. She ain't quick, but she'll get you there."

Clearly a friendly sort, Collins had smooth, café-au-lait skin and close-cropped dark hair. According to the bits of worked metal on his BDU jacket, he was a soldier.

"H- Hiram Hackenbacker," Brains responded, smiling a little. "Fermat, here, is my s- son."

"Pleased to meet you both."

Collins shook their hands, then directed Brains and the boy to strap in on the bench seat behind him. Then he fired the engine back up, and they were on their way.

Fermat had never imagined that anything short of a D&D dwarf-cavern could be so _immense_. Besides labeled pylons, only broad, painted floor trails of red, blue and yellow gave any hint as to where they were headed. Collins stuck with a blue "road", pausing to honk and check his scanners whenever they came to a white-and-black painted intersection. There was a great deal of traffic, but Fermat didn't ask where everyone was going in such a hurry. Obviously, he and his father had been brought to some kind of underground military base. One deemed secure enough to shelter the World President.

Their olive-drab tractor reached the elevators after a ride of about fifteen minutes. Ms. Beckwith climbed out of the cab with a brief word of thanks, but Fermat and his dad both shook Collins' hand, bidding him farewell before leaving. Times were strange and existence uncertain. Everyone mattered.

"Good luck," Collins offered, as they started down to join the impatient Beckwith. "Maybe I'll see you on the way back."

"H- Hopefully so," Brains replied with another, more comfortable, smile. He'd quite liked the cheerful young sergeant.

Beckwith was in a hurry, though, and soon got them moving for the elevators, which were as busy as they were numerous. Fermat counted seventeen of the things, their gleaming steel doors set flush with a very high, blue-painted wall.

Beckwith steered for the nearest open doors, flashing her ID badge and waving everyone else aside. Clearly, rank and urgency had privileges, because they got a car to themselves. Beckwith did not look at Hackenbacker or his son when the doors swished shut, nor at all while she pressed in a code, triggering their descent. But this trip, too, seemed to take forever, without even smooth jazz to beguile their long drop. Just faint, rhythmic clicking and a soft, subtle whirr.

When they reached bottom, something _dinged_ like a microwave oven, and then the doors sighed open. If Fermat had expected some kind of lobby, or another parking cavern, he was disappointed. The elevator opened onto a narrow, transverse hallway stiffly-peopled with Marine guards and Secret Service types. Again, Beckwith flashed her ID, causing the crowd to part and let her on through. There were two other (non-elevator) doors; one across from the lifts, the other at the very end of the hall. Beckwith led them to the across-door, where she punched in codes, had her retinas scanned and spoke her name, grade and purpose into a microphone grille.

"Beckwith, Gloria. GS-4. Escorting Dr. Hiram Hackenbacker and son, Fermat Hackenbacker, to Shogun."

"Proceed," spoke the grille, as a latch _thunked_ and the door gaped wide. They walked on through, feeling the hair-raising crackle of deep-scan energy waves raking their molecules for signs of alien possession.

_Wow,_ thought Fermat. _I__ want to be president._

Beckwith next conducted them through a very short, grey hallway to yet another Marine-guarded door. This time, beyond showing her ID badge, she did not have to justify her presence. One of the Marines simply nodded, opened the door and announced them.

"Madame President, honorable ministers… I present Ms. Beckwith, Doctor and Fermat Hackenbacker."

"Very good, Captain Burke. I thank you."

Lady Murasaki, president over all the world, had chosen to face her guests in dark, formal business attire, seated at a "proper" wooden desk. She was, nevertheless, a quite attractive and elegant woman, and very much in control of the meeting, and of her quite-worried cabinet.

"Madame President," Brains greeted her, choosing to bow.

Murasaki smiled. Then she stood without a single chair-creak or cloth-whisper, bowing a bit less deeply in return.

"Dr. Hackenbacker… and young Fermat. Please, be welcome. I would speak with you both."

_"Both?"_ blurted the engineer, confused.

Murasaki inclined her head and then resumed her seat, indicating that Brains and his son were to relax in the chairs now provided by her guard and departing ministers. Once the Marines, functionaries and Beckwith had cleared the room, she said,

"Indeed, doctor. For is not your son a student at Wharton? And is he not a good school-friend to _mine?"_

Fermat's jaw dropped. He wracked his brains and then...

_"Sam?"_ he gasped. "Sam Nakamura is _your_ son? And his big brother, Eddie, too?"

Murasaki's face altered a bit. Not in a way that showed great expression. More of a fond, proud glow. Reaching for something on her desk, she pressed a button, conjuring up a holograph of herself, Sam, Edwin and Lord Hirotsugu of Clan Fujiwara… dressed in Disney World tourist gear; mouse ears, sunglasses and all. Better times, obviously.

"He is code-named "Yoshi", just as his elder brother's code-name is "Akira", but these are as much a mask as "Edwin and Samuel Nakamura". For their own safety, my sons must be kept well guarded, hidden far from those who would harm me. I have missed them greatly, young Fermat, and the fact that you are friend to my second-born son brings me comfort. It is very nearly as though he were here."

Fermat was too astonished to respond coherently. All he could do was gulp and nod, thinking,

_Sam? But he's more of a geek than __I__ am! Presidents' kids are supposed to be… to be… cool._

Murasaki's attention shifted back to Hackenbacker, who'd held himself together, just a little bit better than Fermat had.

"Doctor," she said, "my need is great, my request simple. Much like yourself, I am a parent. Beyond that, I am one whose responsibility extends to all the people of Earth. I am president, Dr. Hackenbacker, and I find that I do not wish to be the _last_ president. Is there, perhaps, something you have learned of these Mysterons that others have not? A secret… or "back door" that might help us to drive them forever away? Your late, honored wife was among the first to be replicated, and _yours_ was the mind that refined NASA's defense code, saving many lives. When the world thought Captain Black to be a returning hero, _you_ warned of his true nature. And during the recent attack upon the island home of your employer, once again you showed strength and mettle. Now, doctor, I ask that you help us again. I ask for another miracle."

Brains took his glasses off, polished the lenses on his shirt and then put them back on, something he often did while thinking. That done, the engineer opened his mouth and said,

"Madame President, I think I may have s…"

And then the ground shook.


	16. 16: Mixed Feelings

Edited, finally. Thanks for your reviews and suggestions, ED and Tikatu. I am greatly appreciative.

**16: Mixed Feelings**

_Tracy Island, on rather a hectic evening-_

Scott strode along the lushly-carpeted hallway from his own suite to Gordon's, turning several corners and passing many pictures in the process. He wasn't in the mood for a "discussion", but Grandma's message had left no room for excuses or argument. No… Gordon had done something particularly dumb, and Scott was expected to, _er_..."counsel" the lad; no matter how little the task appealed.

He'd had more than enough of this sort of thing from his trainees, who could be relied upon to secretly marry a foreign national, violate local custom and wind up in some rat-hole of a prison, or turn up robbed, beaten, hung-over and diseased the morning after going on leave. Choose one of the above, nearly every time. Thinking about it, Scott supposed that his younger brothers were not _that_ much different than a lot of wild junior officers in training… but that didn't mean he had to like it… or enjoy the evening's unwanted mission.

Reaching the door to Gordon's suite, he knocked once and entered immediately, not waiting to be asked inside. But his second… no, _third_ youngest brother was not in the big entertainment room. Nor was he on the balcony, outside. _Hmm_…

Scott was just about to call out or hit his cell phone, when he noticed a faint stripe of golden light beneath the door to Gordon's bedroom. Asleep? At seven-thirty? Not likely.

Like most of the family living quarters, Gordon's suite had not one, but _two_ sitting rooms; one for receiving guests, the other for the resident's private use. Also a spacious exercise and study area. These three doors were spaced evenly around a very short hallway that ended in a linen closet. Scott went to the left door, gave it a single sharp rap, then opened up and walked on inside.

Gordon was sitting in tee-shirt and shorts at the edge of his bed, looking apprehensive as all get-out. His hair was wet, and the overall impression that Scott received was that he wished he might have gone right down the drain with the bath water. In keeping with his obvious low spirits, there was only a single light on; a bedside reading lamp set to dim.

Right. Had this been the Air Force, Scott Tracy would have been seated behind a desk while Gordon stood before him at attention, waiting to be expertly filleted and verbally diced. But it _wasn't_ the Air Force, and Scott was not in the mood to apply the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Not here. Not tonight.

Instead, he got the straight-backed wooden chair from Gordon's desk, whipped it around and sat on it backward, arms folded tiredly atop the seatback, legs to either side.

"Okay," he began. "Hit me. What the hell'd you do to get grandma riled up?"

Gordon's hazel eyes widened with genuine shock.

"She didn't explain, then?" he asked, after nervously clearing his throat.

Scott shook his head, _no._

"All I was told was: quote, _"get your ass up there and straighten that boy out",_ end quote. So, again… what happened?"

His red-haired younger brother took a very deep breath and shifted a little on the edge of his bed, mussing the duvet. Fidgeting; not a good sign.

"Right. Um… it was this way, y'see. I had just nipped down t' TinTin's room, meanin' t' ask if she'd fancy a walk by th' shore, and… _erm_…"

All at once, Scott's eyes closed and he began massaging his temples with the strong fingers and thumb of one hand. In a slightly strained voice, the pilot said,

"Gordon… you have about thirty seconds to live. Please use the rest of your time on earth wisely, and tell me you _weren't_ caught in bed with TinTin Kyrano. Now. Tell me _now."_

"I… no. Not at all. But… not for want of effort and motivation, so t' speak."

Scott was looking at him again, blue eyes stern and forbidding.

"What's that supposed to mean?" the pilot demanded.

"That… t' be perfectly honest, had grandmother not walked in as she did…"

"You'd be carving another notch on your bedpost?" Scott finished, glowering.

"No!" Gordon surged to his feet; anxious, confused and something quite else. "I said it wasn't like that, Scott. TinTin's not in th' _least_ like those others. She… that is t' say, I'm… I…"

Scott stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then, when Gordon's confused protests subsided, he said,

"Sit down. Let me ask you a question."

Gordon obediently plopped himself back on the blue-covered bed, looking about as miserable as a young man could look without being dead or in prison. Once he was settled, Scott asked him,

"When you were getting things started with TinTin just now, would you characterize what you had in mind as having sex… or making love?"

"Love," Gordon replied quietly, without even having to think. "I would never do anythin' t' harm her, Scott. Not for all th' world and everything in it. Better t' leave now, and be hurt, myself, than…"

The young athlete and WASP pilot trailed off unhappily, gazing at the carpet between his bare feet. Scott sighed.

"Believe it or not… and you probably don't… I know what you mean. Except that Cindy's gone, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it but stay alive and keep dragging myself through the motions… which apparently includes yelling at _you_ for acting like a stupid kid in love."

Gordon didn't very well know what to do, then; how to make amends for raising the past. One thing he'd learnt about his "cousins" was that they weren't much given to opening up. Steady on, and all that. So he stood and went over to clasp Scott's shoulder, saying,

"Terribly sorry to have stirred matters up like this, Scott. I wasn't thinkin', and it might be best f'r everyone if I left a bit early. Just, if you would, please tell her…"

Scott shook his head.

_"You_ tell her. Write a letter, and I'll deliver it. But, Gordon… the important thing to remember is that every action has repercussions, and that not every smashed heart bounces back. If she matters to you, keep that in mind. If you love her and you mean it… then come back _after_ your cruise, and do the right thing by her. Otherwise, leave her alone. Because starting something that might go unfinished… is hurtful as hell."

Scott stood up.

"That's it," he said. "That's all I've got for you. Consider yourself officially reprimanded, sailor."

They shook hands. Matching his brother's military bearing, Gordon replied,

"Aye, sir. Thank you."

…And wished for the power to make things alright again. Later that night, after writing a very long letter, Gordon Tracy left the island.  
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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Somewhere else, slightly earlier, underground-_

The floor and walls shuddered and pulsed. Alarms tore the air like claws shredding paper. Marines and Secret Service agents burst into the office and seized Lady Murasaki, who was just able to snatch up her hologram projector before being hustled from the room.

"Ma'am, this way!" Someone shouted, steering her, Hackenbacker and Fermat toward the door at the end of the hallway. _"Hurry!"_

Cracks were developing in the ceiling, from which bits of fine sand rained down on them all. Running at a half-crouch between two large, uniformed men, the World President scarcely had time to think, much less demand explanations. Instead, she was shoved through the unlocked doorway and then herded along a metal gangplank to an open airlock.

"Inside, Ma'am… Watch your head. Dr. Hackenbacker, you and your son, too. Get in! Launch code's preset and so are the destination and alternate. Good luck and God bless!"

_10… 9… 8…_

Her guards… She had to… but there was simply no time. One moment Captain Burke and Agent Frye were thrusting Murasaki into an escape pod, and then Hackenbacker and Fermat had tumbled in after her.

_7… 6… 5…_

Next, the pod's door clanged shut and sealed, permitting her no more than a brief, tortured glimpse of her loyal guards and a crumbling passage.

_4… 3… 2…_

Fermat was almost equally confused, but Brains got them both in a seat and strapped in, as the pod's short, chilly countdown proceeded.

_1… 0…_

For his own part, the engineer barely made it to a seat before the countdown clock reached zero.

A violent, crackling hum set up. Giant electromagnets swung into action, and the tiny escape pod was enmeshed in a magnetic field so powerful that it could have deflected a hurtling asteroid. This field expanded outward at the speed of light; accelerating the president's escape pod, firing it into the grip of a new set of magnets and thence to another and another, until the pod shot from its tube and into cold, arctic air at well past blackout speed.

The world went as horribly dark as though they'd been shoved in a sack and clubbed senseless. Being youngest, Fermat was first to recover. Waking, he went from feeling himself squashed like an insect beneath an enormous shoe, to the smooth acceleration of powered flight. Somewhere, at some point, a small ion engine had cut on.

Daytime. There was a lone, tiny window like a ship's porthole, through which Fermat could see blue sky and a splinter of sun. His father and the president awoke a few seconds later; Murasaki calling something out that Fermat didn't understand. Names, possibly.

She touched a button on the arm of her couch, triggering the projection of a floating view screen; one focused on the base they'd left behind. There were other escape pods. Fermat saw thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. But several sleek, alien Cyclops-craft were swooping like hawks through the flock of departing pods, shooting many to bits, slashing directly through dozens of others. Below, other escape craft were caught when the ground quivered, then heaved itself upward like a giant volcano, jetting geysers of magma high into the air.

Lady Murasaki watched it all. She saw radio towers crumple and roads crack in half. She saw bridges disintegrate and escape pods blown to small pieces, while their own shot away safe. Unable to help, unable to do anything at all but summon disaster, she cried.

Fermat struggled out of his nylon seat webbing and went to her side. Hugging Sam's weeping mother, he said,

"Look, don't y- you give up, Mrs. Nakamura. You c- can't. Too many people depend on you! B- Besides, if m- my theory is… correct, the Mysterons m- make a… genetic backup of everyone th- they destroy, down to th- the final kink in the last n- nucleotide! S- So all I need to… do is f- find one of those st- stupid shards and discharge its… energies, and I can retrieve c- copies of all th- the dead people! In- In- _Including_ my mom!"

Other than the rushing wind and crackling ion flare, their pod fell silent. For a long moment, no one spoke. Then,

"Y- You're sure of th- this, son?" Brains whispered tensely, too torn with hope and emotion to do more than sit there and stare.

"Reasonably so, dad. I've checked and r- rechecked my figures… gone over th- the data from Black's escape ship a h- hundred times! All I need t- to find out for sure is… one of the green shards."

Lady Murasaki was once more as calm and remote as a star. Patting Fermat's arm, she said to him,

"You are clearly as learned as my son has told me. But, why would the aliens wish to retain such detailed information about their victims, young Fermat?"

"Because th- they advance through in- incorporating data, Mrs. Nakamura. T- To them, information is as m- much food as… rendered organic m- material is. R- Remember E = MC2?"

She nodded. Possessed of a sudden idea, Brains half listened, half bent his attention to operating the pod's little comm unit, using it to generate a sort of cloaking field. Fermat continued, saying,

"W- Well, they "eat" by converting m- mass directly into… energy, and the more h- highly organized the mass, th- the greater its nutritional v- value. Sentients like us r- rank highest of… all on the m- menu. But th- they don't seem to like… the "taste" of animals."

Murasaki unstrapped her own seat webbing to stand up on the escape pod's circular, plastic-mat floor.

"Then, if all of this information is encoded within the shards, and may be released therefrom, we must act swiftly to locate one."

Said Brains,

"And, ah… And soon, Madame President. B- Because a colleague and I h- have made the, ah… the p- parallel discovery that th- the energy stored in these sh- shards c- could be released in a single, catastrophic b- burst that would, ah… would s- sterilize the planet."

Murasaki thought quietly for a time, watching Brains tinker with the comm unit. Then, she said,

"Captain Black is in custody below Cheyenne Mountain, in your own country, Dr. Hackenbacker. Perhaps if returned to consciousness, he might be induced to reveal the location of these alien artifacts."

"Or h- he might just, ah… just laugh in y- your face and break out of, ah… out of p- prison."

Brains shook his head worriedly, causing his brown hair to flop and glasses to skew.

"On the, ah… the whole, M- Madame President, I b- believe that Captain Black is best l- left as a very f- final option."

Fighter planes had begun to appear, streaking in from bases in Nova Scotia, Vancouver and Quebec. They were searching for the World President, who was no longer safe anywhere. Mused Hackenbacker, rubbing his chin with one hand,

"According t- to a very, ah… very good f- friend of mine, the robust approach t- to finding a needle in a h- haystack is to set f- fire to the hay, and th- then c- comb through the ashes w- with a metal detector. H- He would be a useful m- man to, ah… to have around j- just now. I could c- call him."

"Or m- maybe we could just go b-back and work on the p- problem _there, _dad," Fermat suggested, because he'd had more than enough of WorldGov's hospitality and safety. "If everyplace is e- equally dangerous, I'd r- rather be… home. W- Wouldn't you?"

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_Tracy Island-_

Virgil had opened the door to Jeff's ornate office… was just about to take over for John… when an oddly coded signal came through. Mostly integers, it was, disaggregating into temporal-spatial coordinates, and the number they'd decided to give Thunderbird (2, because she'd follow the putative scout craft in, bringing needed equipment to the scene of a rescue emergency).

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Virgil wondered aloud, frowning at the desktop comm screen. John shrugged.

"Off hand, I'd say we're invited to show up in the skies over Saskatchewan, with a big plane and bigger guns. Somebody wants to go hunting."


	17. 17: Release

Yay! This time, it worked! Hi, guys! Been a little busy, but everything's on track, and life is _good_.

**17: Release**

_Southern Spain, at an exclusive, Mediterranean yacht basin-_

Of Amphitrite nothing at all remained; her mass, passengers and crew having been seemingly swallowed whole. Though the helijet pilot in his damaged craft sputtered round the attack site many times, there was nothing to be found and no one to save.

Albert Jenkins was shaken enough to immediately call his wife, Caroline, while Jeff Tracy contacted his family and the board of directors (mostly to keep stock prices from plummeting at the rumor of his death). Leisha Bonaventure had nothing at home but a cat, and no one to call who'd much care that death had just brushed a cold hand past the back of her shivering neck. She pretended, though; calling the time and weather, instead. One had to have pride, after all.

A WASP submarine showed up in less than an hour, flanked by a trio of Spanish Navy surface vessels. Jeff Tracy, Al Jenkins, Bonaventure and the pilot were picked up and conveyed to a nearby hospital for observation, but Jeff didn't rest. Instead… plagued by thoughts of Scarlet's "hit list"… he called the World Gov finance ministry and petitioned for a delay in their Tracy Aerospace audit.

It wasn't easy to talk, sitting up in a semi-private hospital room with bustling interns, constant loud announcements and sick people about, but Jeff Tracy got his point across. He'd always been a very persistent, driven man.

"Listen, Mister… _Lord_ Carnarvon… sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but we're both busy men, and I intend to keep this conversation short."

(The bed creaked piteously whenever he shifted position, and a television mounted in the corner broadcast distracting snippets of telenovella and local news, making it difficult to think.)

"I've been targeted three times, now; once in a private aircraft, again on my own island, and just now, while dining on a friend's yacht."

A nurse came in with strong, steaming coffee and paracetamol tablets, bless her heart. At the moment, he could have consumed the output of several _coffea arabica_ plantations and entire Wal-Mart pharmacopeias.

"Gracias," Jeff muttered off the phone, preparing to ingest health and alertness. Then, speaking once more to Lord Carnarvon,

"Yes, _that_ yacht… the Amphitrite, lost with Stavros Valianatos and all hands. If the attack had come ten minutes sooner, I'd be gone, too. No, I _don't_ think it was a regrettable accident, Lord Carnarvon… and I don't think the worst is behind us, either. Under the circumstances, not only is it risky for _me_ to be seen in public, it's dangerous for those around me… _including_ over-zealous finance ministers. You run the risk of becoming a war statistic in my presence, Mister Carnarvon; all for the sake of a few missing pennies. Is this matter really worth putting both our lives on the line for, or would you rather just postpone the damn audit?"

Bonaventure poked her sleek head in, saw that her employer was still on the phone, and withdrew for awhile. Less than five minutes later, Jeff Tracy had left the room to find her. Like Albert Jenkins III, she was much relieved and impressed to learn that the audit had been called off, and that they were free to head home. She wasn't surprised, however. Not at all. Jeff Tracy was a man who could turn most anything into an advantage. It ran in the family.

________________________________________________

_Tracy Island, not quite simultaneously-_

Like his father, John had made a very swift decision and acted on it. Several minutes before Virgil walked into the office… before they received that coded summons… he did something that was to have far-reaching consequences.

Feeling responsible for the living Mysteron aircraft he'd been duped into capturing, John contrived to release it. Secretly, though; without compromising Tracy Aerospace, NASA or even Commander Garrett (the WASP officer who'd used him to shut down and seize the alien plane).

Thinking quickly, John used the slang code they'd hammered out earlier on the pool deck. First he sent forth a targeted reboot signal, one rife with new security overwrites and patches. He had a plan, you see; not only did John Tracy mean to rescue the wounded life-form, but to control its behavior and infect whatever it came in contact with. Among the Easter Eggs inadvertently left behind by Captain Scarlet's invasion (_yeah… he'd figured that one out, finally_) was a thorough knowledge of Spectrum security, and the breeching techniques thereof. Kid stuff, really, hackable by any toddler with a little inside knowledge and a barnyard "See-N-Say".

Upshot was, the plane had been sent to their facility below Uganda's Rwenzori Mountains. Poking through the files proved that the place and its systems weren't impenetrable. Just an interesting exercise in sneak.

He got in using not _lines_ of code, but entire matrices of it, teasing forth data while installing new backdoors and wormholes. Got everything set up just right, and no one the wiser. Then, at the appropriate time, the Mysteron plane's containment field sparked off, along with the base alarm system. Her cell crashed like Windows 53, allowing the wakened craft to reach out with flailing whips for all sorts of metal and plastic foodstuffs. Then, changing her shape many times to baffle Spectrum's scanners and weaponry, she followed his instructions and departed the area; resembling one moment a Jeep, the next a helijet, Quonset hut or large packing crate. But always shifting. Always moving.

Didn't take long on his end, but earned the Tracys a certain amount of goodwill, and planted serious changes in the gears and circuits of the other side's living machines. Despite Black's claims to the contrary, they discovered that at least one of the organics could be trusted; at least one of them was able to communicate.

John and Virgil were in the air soon afterward, racing for Canada, and the troubled source of a brief, coded message.

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_Meanwhile, flying a tiny escape pod-_

Brains urged the president _not_ to do the expected thing and return to her WorldGov handlers.

"Y- You're too, ah… too easily tracked b- by the resultant large, ah… large-scale movement of men, r- resources and technology, Ma'am," Hackenbacker explained earnestly, blinking at her through slightly scuffed lenses. "It's obvious that the, ah… the Mysterons c- can't pinpoint you, or we'd be d- dead already. But they can, ah… can _guess_ pretty accurately, especially if y- you, ah… you stay in one place for v- very long. Wh- Where major support systems g- gather, that's where authority's g- gone to, ah… to ground, so to speak. As John w- would say, _"bet me"._ Right n- now, you've dropped off the map again, but they'll close in just as s- soon as, ah… as your entourage does."

Pale and quiet, Lady Murasaki nodded. Gazing through their whirring escape pod's small, round viewing port, she said,

"What, then, do you suggest, Dr. Hackenbacker? You were brought before me so that questions might be answered and defenses arranged."

Even tired and beset, Lady Murasaki Shikibu radiated calm. Though she bore the weight of the world, she did not falter, nor crumble. Instead, she simply asked,

"Under the circumstances, doctor, how may I best serve and defend my people?"

Brains smiled, but quashed the urge to embrace this beautiful, porcelain-doll of a woman. One simply did not go about hugging presidents. Bad form.

"Madame President, if y- you'll allow it, my friends can, ah… can escort you to a remote l- location, while permitting the M- Mysterons and world at large to believe that y- you've been, ah… been eliminated. There, we c- could work out a plan to, ah… to isolate and harness one of th- the shards."

Murasaki's face changed subtly. Paled, maybe, or grew measurably stiller.

"My sons shall grieve, and Hiro, as well."

"N- Not as much as… they w- would if you were really d- dead," young Fermat cut in, flinching as another fighter jet shrieked past. "Mrs. Nakamura, S- Sam and I are… school f- friends. We've got all s- sorts of… catch phrases and secret s- signals. I _know_ I can f- figure out something to say that only _he_… w- would understand, to tell h- him you're… okay."

Murasaki smiled at him, reminded warmly of Sam and Edwin, the prized jewels of her heart. If they and Hiro could somehow be warned…

"Gentlemen," she said, regally inclining her dark head, "I place my life and the world in your hands. Lead on."


	18. 18: Side Swipe

Just a little bit more!

**18: Side Swipe**

_In weary transit-_

Jeff Tracy would have liked to hurry straight home. With the audit postponed (if not outright cancelled) he'd little left to worry about except up-coming contract negotiations... and producing enough air, space and sea-craft to meet the combined needs of WorldGov, WASP and NASA. On top of all that, there was a new production plant scheduled to open its doors near Ulan Bator, and he couldn't appoint any one else… not even his son, Scott… to meet with the Dowager Empress Dou Yi for staffing and local resource talks. Her Imperial Majesty, the Daughter of Heaven, would see no one but Jeff Tracy, himself.

He'd always been a busy man, and too often a distant, telephone-tag father. He just didn't know… running a vast, multinational corporation as he did… how to change all that. Retirement hadn't worked out, pure and simple.

So he sent lots of messages, and watched video clips of everything from Scott's elementary school story readings (the bereaved pilot had gotten through _"Where The Wild Things Are"_ and started on _"Harry The Dirty Dog"_) to Ricky's wobbly first steps (leaning on Janie, of course; the two were inseparable). As best he could, Jeff tried to make himself a part of life at home. He called in before supper each day, and just before bedtime, but it wasn't the same as being there, and Jeff knew it. He sent souvenirs, advice and his love… but the man himself had to remain where he was, firmly at the helm of Tracy Aerospace. What else could he do?

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_Thunderbird 2-_

Virgil Tracy had the left seat, this time, his astronaut brother, John, the right. Humming bits and snippets of this and that, Virgil attended to flying the big cargolifter, while John scanned the works for signs of Mysteron takeover.

"Nothing?" Virgil asked (a little anxiously) once his blond brother quit typing to stretch in the copilot's seat like a cat.

John shook his head.

"A couple of attempts, it looks like; but the anti-virus program is holding up well. Actually mutating almost faster than I can keep up."

"And that's a good thing?" Virgil persisted. Computers were much less his forte than sports, fishing, art and music.

John shrugged, leaning back in the padded seat.

"Yeah… I guess. Depends on how you look at it. The Mysterons and my self-writing code could end up taking this fight to levels I can't reach, even in theory. I'm not sure how to deal with that, besides finding some way to get smarter."

Virgil grunted, glad that a stick and throttle or piano keyboard were the most complex tools he had to deal with. Outside the view screen, the Pacific Ocean rolled deep and angry, whipped by powerful winds. The sun passed from zenith as Virgil flew the plane eastward, growing noticeably redder and lower. Scott checked in periodically, once with news of a "happening" in northern Canada, something so major that even WNN was withholding details.

_"Be careful, you two," _their brother told them over the comm. _"I've got a weird feeling that something's about to go wrong. Just… if it doesn't look right, back off. Got it?"_

"Understood, Scott," Virgil agreed, frowning worriedly. John, however, said little and promised less. All he did was scan ahead and hack into Spectrum's secure comm frequencies to find out what exactly was going on. Seconds after breaking in, he began to curse; dryly and mechanically, barely audible above 2's growling engines.

"What?" Virgil demanded. "John, what is it?"

"There's been another wave of attacks. Two more CEOs are down, but I've got a lock on dad's cell phone, so he's okay, probably. I'll call Scott and find out for sure, in a minute… On top of that, a secret military outpost in Saskatchewan has just been wiped off the map… and apparently, the president's disappeared."

Virgil ripped his brown eyes off the view screen and instruments to look at John.

"She was _there?_ In Canada?"

"She was, if I'm reading all of this coded intel correctly. Which means that Brains and Fermat were there, too… and if the signal we got came from them…"

Virgil's hard stare relaxed a bit. His grip on the steering yoke loosening enough to let blood back into the pilot's cramped fingers.

"Then they're alive, and maybe her, too. You're _sure_ the signal's from Brains?"

John leaned forward to tap a few keys.

"Who else would have our code words for Thunderbird 2?" he asked. "L.A.'s emergency teams referred to her as the _"Rescue International cargo plane",_ remember? So did all of the media sites."

Virgil nodded thoughtfully, turning his attention back to flying their big, touchy 'Bird.

"Yeah," he decided. "You're right, John. It's got to be Hackenbacker, or… you don't think the Mysterons could have learned our system just to lure us away from the island, do you?"

John shrugged again.

"Life is full of little surprises," he said. "Always carry a gun, some cash and a change of underwear, and you'll be ready for most of them, though."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," Virgil promised, smiling a little. John was a weird guy and always had been, but he'd taken his job as big-brother-in-charge very seriously, and his advice was _technically _sound. Usually.

The coordinates they'd received brought them far across the Canadian wilderness, over a forest so dense and rugged as to defy penetration by anything short of a Green Beret parachute team. Virgil flew their craft in low, banking circles while John scanned the tree-line and forest floor. Off to the south, great columns of smoke and dust rose into the air, spiked with occasional bright laser flares. Not good. Not good, at all.

"See anything?" Virgil questioned his brother.

"No. Wait… There it is, screened by brush and rocks. Spherical… aluminum, space-grade alloy with ion traces and an ejected engine… Looks like an empty escape pod. Anyplace nearby you could set us down, Virgil?"

"Umm… Give me a second, John. I'm working on it."

Turned out there was a granite ridgeline not far away; projecting from the woods like the spiny back of an armoured dinosaur. Only a maniac would have proposed landing there. Only his brother would have agreed.

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_Below the murky North Atlantic, steaming hard for the Azores-_

Gordon Tracy did his best to fit back into life aboard Mako, but it wasn't proving easy to do. First, mindful of Scott's stern lecture and his own feelings for TinTin, the young Skydiver pilot genuinely struggled to keep his mind on his duty and off of the lassies. But the resolution was difficult to maintain with Lt. Commander Anwynn Norris paying him such graceful, flattering attention. Little touches... quick looks from beneath lowered lashes... She was a beautiful woman who both outranked and fancied him; a combination guaranteed to keep any young man's nerves twitching.

Second… it truly appeared as though someone on board was trying to kill him.


	19. 19: Test Fire

Thanks Tal, ED, SusanMartha, Sam and Tikatu! Here's a bit more. Somewhat chatty in the middle, but will edit soon...

**19: Test Fire**

_Northern Canada-_

The big, greenish cargolifter lined up with the long axis of that spiky stone ridge; hovering in place for a bit as her pilot searched out a decent landing site. There weren't many. The grey-and-black, mica-flaked rock was crumbly and jagged, surrounded on both sides by an ocean of hissing dark pines. In the background, smoke and dust twined upward from the ruins of a subterranean base, while Mysteron jets and Canadian fighter craft swooped and dove through the skies above. Like a distant thunderstorm, it was; too far to feel or hear, but bringing certain disaster elsewhere.

"Don't drift too far north," John reminded his brother. "We have to stay within reasonable grav-sled distance of the escape pod."

Virgil nodded, concentrating. John had one set of skills, Virgil Tracy another. He flew intuitively, artistically, and couldn't have put into words exactly how he found a toe-hold on that fragile rock palisade for his massive 'Bird. He just did it.

On half impeller, gentle as a dandelion seed, she came down; weight spread as far as the inertial projectors would allow. Didn't flatten any anthills, even, though she might have nudged a pebble or two.

There was no _thump_, just a shift in slant and vibration to indicate that Thunderbird 2 had landed. Dark forest tossed in the wind to one side of her perch, was relatively still on the other, blocked by the ridge.

"Good job," John told Virgil, as they unstrapped to rise. "Next on the checklist is unloading a pair of sleds and a med-kit, followed by combing the pod site for survivors."

Virgil knew all this, of course, but he was still glad enough to have John back from Mars not to quibble at his older brother's constant NASA-style pre-flights. So they checked in with Scott, and then locked down the cockpit, leaving Thunderbird 2's computer and defense systems up. Then John and Virgil fetched a pair of grav sleds from the cargo hold, extruded a ramp and shot out into the forest on the western side of that high stone ridge.

Their grav sleds were more like hovering blue snowmobiles than sledges, employing magnified Casimir forces to remain about three feet off of the bumpy, uneven ground. Passing from under the massive dark shadow of Thunderbird 2, they flashed into slanting bright sunshine briefly, and then on into dark, chilly shade. The trees were very straight and tall, heavily needled and permitting little undergrowth. Even their own spindly saplings were starved for light beneath the spreading limbs of these arboreal monsters.

John had input the escape pod's coordinates, but Virgil led the way, being more at ease in tracking situations. They bore southwest, quick and quiet as a pair of hunting owls. Except in sharp turns, or when the ground dropped suddenly away beneath them, the fast-moving sleds didn't make much noise. Huge, broad trunks whipped by on all sides, divided by spears of pale sunlight. A few minutes later they'd arrived; racing up to the site of a brush-screened escape pod.

Virgil didn't dismount immediately, because he'd long since learned that a suspicious nature and long life tend to go hand in hand. John pulled up alongside him and scanned their surroundings again, using a portable device he'd brought along from Thunderbird 2.

"It's abandoned," he said of the tilted, spherical white craft. A cursory visual inspection of the interior proved him right. "But I make out three heat trails headed off _that_ way."

Virgil looked in the direction of John's point, where his own sharp, knowing gaze detected scuffed pine straw and a few bent twigs. Yes, indeed; three people had headed westward, and they weren't very accomplished woodsmen. Again, Virgil led the way, allowing John to scan, plot and program behind him. Also to contact a pacing, still-jittery Scott. Ten minutes of further sled travel brought Virgil and John to their quarry, who seemed to have taken shelter in a small cave.

"Brains? Fermat?" Virgil called softly, as he banked his grav sled to a halt several yards before the narrow cave mouth. On closer inspection, it was little more than a root-woven cleft in the rocky forest floor, at the base of a particularly massive old fir tree.

"Dr. Hackenbacker?" The pilot ventured once more, slightly louder. He then looked over at John, who merely shook his blond head.

"The cave's situated among rocks loaded with minerals that resonate at the same frequency as most scanning waves," he said, putting away the hand-held device. "In other words, I can't see inside."

Hearing that, Virgil smiled and dismounted from his bobbing grav sled.

"It's got to be Brains, then," said the muscular pilot. "No one else would find just the right kind of rocks to hide in."

Replied a faint, underground voice,

"A- And no one but you would, ah… would b- be able to find us, anyhow."

Hackenbacker. He climbed out of the small cave with Fermat, and a woman they recognized immediately as Murasaki Shikibu, president of Earth and the Moon. A bit dirty and scuffed, but in good general shape.

"Madame President," the engineer announced, "P- Please allow me to, ah… to introduce my friend and c- colleague John Tracy and his, ah… his brother, Virgil."

John wasn't much good at meetings with important people, despite being somewhat famous, himself. He hated crowds, introductions and parties about equally. Fortunately, Virgil was more sociable. The big, coverall-clad pilot made as if touching the brim of a hat and nodded, saying,

"Pleased to meet you, Ma'am. _Both_ of us."

John glanced at his brother and then at the president. Then he looked away, avoiding eye-contact. But Lady Murasaki was not so easily dismissed from awareness.

"You are an astronaut, Mr. Tracy, are you not?" she said to John, after returning Virgil's greeting. "One of the brave handful to survive the destruction of Endurance Base?"

John glanced back at her again with attention like a skipping stone; a bit less uncomfortably, this time.

"I survived Mars," he told her, "but it's a matter of opinion, about my astronaut flight-status. I'm really more of a company tech-rep. Grounded till further notice, at that."

Murasaki smiled at him.

"If NASA has determined this, Mr. Tracy, then they do not see clearly. You are a secretive man with many layers, but a good heart. I deem that you step over rules or pass beneath them, but that the end and aim are correct and noble."

Not certain how to reply, John simply stood there a moment. Then, he said,

"Okay. Thanks. Probably we ought to get moving. Everyone's looking for you, and not just our side. We can take you anyplace you'd like to go, within reason…"

"Th- That's part of, ah… of the p- problem," Brains cut in, waving a hand toward the cave mouth. "If y- you'll come inside f- for a minute, we can, ah… can discuss f- future plans there. The situation is a l- little more delicate than, ah… than just a p- pick up and delivery, John."

The cave inside was greenish-dark, its walls sparkling with long veins of pale ore. The ceiling was low and knotted with earth-crusted roots, the floor dry and pebbly. Obscurely, it smelled good in there. Like a root-cellar, back home in Kansas or Wyoming. You almost expected an apple barrel, or a few strings of onions, herbs and sausage. Or _they_ did, anyway; because not all the tropical islands in the world could scrub home out of John and Virgil Tracy.

"What seems to be the major malfunction?" John asked his friend, once they'd settled themselves inside the cave.

"Th- The president needs a p- place to hide while d- directing affairs of state and, ah… and s- seeming to be d- dead."

In a few short sentences, he described what had happened at the hidden base; how the Mysterons had attacked and destroyed it, forcing the president to flee. Her current predicament was grim, for Murasaki required some way to avoid further attempts on her life, while remaining in control of Earth's defenses.

Fermat (who'd said very little up to this point) added,

"But M- Mrs. Nakamura also wants to… make sure that h- her kids and the l- lord of her clan are told that… she's okay. It's im- important."

"A- And," said Hackenbacker, "we need, ah… need a p- plan to deal with the sh- shards, which, by my, ah… my c- calculations, have absorbed enough energy now t- to annihilate every m- major city on Earth."

"Unless the stored power's c- converted… back into its original m- mass," blurted Fermat. "The information's all there, d- dad! Properly d- decoded and… controlled, the discharged energy w- would just turn back into wh- what and who it w- was, instead of some ginormous explosion. I'm… sure of it!"

Everyone looked at John, but he was examining the ground, stirring pebbles around with a stick; deep in some private well of calm thought. Virgil had plenty to say, however, starting with,

"People are gonna panic if they think they've lost another president. It was bad enough after Moreira went into his coma. Remember that? Plus, you'd have to reassure WorldGov and the separate nations that all these ghostly directives were even legitimate. Who's next in line, anyway? The defense minister? What's her name…? Chatterjee?"

Nobody liked that idea. Not even John, who despised politics and hadn't voted since daycare (for class mascot; Cookie Monster, as it happened).

"From a secure location," Lady Murasaki decided, "I will send coded missives to the Russian prince, the English king, the Chinese empress, Israeli prime minister, Canadian premier and American president. Also the emirs of Ethiopia, Persia and Araby. We have, as young Fermat so charmingly put the matter, our own "catchphrases". They will know that it is I who speaks to them."

John looked up at her, then, saying,

"Ma'am… no disrespect intended, but _no_, they won't. When someone's been cloned by the Mysterons, they come back with appearance and knowledge intact. The first generation of replicants was short-lived and awkward, but they've been getting better ever since. No one's going to know that it _is_ you. Gut feelings don't transmit well by coded missive, Ma'am. President Cranney's a decent guy… I've stood for a few photo ops with him… but he's cautious, and there's no telling how he, or Prince Igor, or any of the rest will react to your coded messages. Suspiciously, would be my bet."

Fermat touched the president's slim, dark-suited shoulder, for John's words had bitten deep. Said Virgil,

"Problem is, the way the Mysterons have handled this invasion, no one can trust anybody else. But I think we still have to get you to safety somewhere and contact world leaders. Plus… Why not dad? He's got _major_ pull, and most of those nations are still paying off contracts with TA. They'll listen, unless they want their debts called in, immediately."

Made sense. Money talks, even when diplomacy stumbles. For the rest, the actual shard finding…

"S- Something charged with, ah… with Mysteron energy and b- brought to life by it ought to, ah… to s- still be attuned to th- the source," Brains told them all.

John gave him a very slight smile, saying,

"Takes one to know one, huh? Well, besides Mako-1, I can think of another earthside living machine that may be willing to cooperate. Depends on how grateful she's feeling for services rendered."

…But he didn't bother to explain the comment.

They left the cave after about half an hour of intense discussion, Fermat's idea in particular being held up to scrutiny. If it worked… if they really _could_ get everyone back, with no deadly release of stored energy…

John rode with Hackenbacker on one sledge, Virgil with the president and Fermat on the other. The trip back was slowed by the constant shrieking passage overhead of dark, boomerang-shaped Mysteron craft. Canadian and American fighter planes, too. John gave the latter a boost by sending forth an upgrade, allowing faster tracking of the Mysterons' shape changes. Other than that, the land-bound rescuers couldn't help much.

They had all they could do to reach Thunderbird 2 in one piece. Halfway back, the president's escape pod was dissolved and incorporated almost in front of them. It disappeared in a sudden burst of green light and shimmering particles, swallowed up by a slaloming, dodging black plane. A tree erupted and fell at nearly the same time, as that which gave chase to the Mysteron craft misfired and loosed a wild shot. Fermat was blown off the grav sled and John got a shoulder full of splinters, but no one was too badly hurt, and they were able to move on.

Now the entire forest echoed with the scream and crump of air-to-air missiles and the sizzling crack of green energy. Trees burst apart or crashed against their burning fellows, sometimes within yards of the fleeing people. Smoke and glowing pine straw floated on the wind, making it hard to draw breath.

Thunderbird 2 appeared through the trees at last, still clinging to her precarious perch. But sleek dark war-craft darted and wove overhead, and the entire scene was bathed in smoky emerald light. Thunderbird 2 had indeed been found, by both sides at once.

...Nor were matters appreciably better aboard Mako, for a certain belaguered young lieutenant.


	20. 20: Suspicious Behavior

Second attempt, as the first one didn't quite get through. Great week, but _long..._!

**20: Suspicious Behavior**

_Northwestern Canada, near a bald and jagged stone ridge-_

The forest around them smelt strongly of laser-burnt wood and leaking, fried sap. There was smoke and noise in the quivering air, which boiled as well with circling aircraft. Some of these were Mysteron planes and very much alive. The rest were Canadian and American fighter jets, with their "brains" in the pilot's seat.

The greenish hulk of Thunderbird 2 sat upon the ridge like a coiled and sleeping dragon, lit occasionally by flashes and scanning waves from the battle above. Five people waited at the edge of the smoldering wood. They were mounted unevenly on twin grav sleds like hovering snowmobiles. Their faces were grim and streaked with char, and one of them (Virgil's) was a study in deep consternation.

"I've got to get to my 'Bird," he told John. "She's a sitting duck, up there!"

But his blond older brother made a slight calming gesture, saying,

"It's under control, Virgil. I've done a little remote refactoring, and we're due to recieve some… there she is."

Big, dark-haired Virgil twisted about on his grav sled to face the direction that John was looking. _She?_

As the pilot watched, a fast-moving black dot appeared in the turbulent skies to the south. Swiftly and silently, far outpacing its own engine noise, the craft grew from a speck to a long, wicked dart powered by alien energy. _She?_ Virgil thought, again, _there's a __girl__ flying that thing?_

The other planes had little time to react as this speeding dart flashed high overhead, broadcasting a code input earlier by John Tracy. She tore the sky like a knife; like a freed prisoner, or a bat out of Tartarus, trailing flame and distant thunder.

The human-piloted craft fared best. They wobbled and stalled, but remained aloft. The Mysteron planes shut down and rebooted, converting back to ovoid or spherical shape and falling from the sky like a hail of black meteors, carving great craters where they struck ground. In all the dust and confusion, John said,

"We've got about eight minutes, Virgil. Lead the way."

His athletic younger brother kick-started the laden grav sled and shot him a strange look, but complied. Young Fermat had his arms around the president, who had _her_ arms about Virgil Tracy. He hung on tight as Virgil accelerated forward and up the grey, flaking ridge. Rock splintered and showered all around them. Wind shrilled through peaks and clefts, making the same complaint that phantoms do. But Fermat ignored the cold and lonely wind to crane around for a look at the second sled and the forest's edge.

As they climbed in zigzagging lunges he saw smoking holes in the forest canopy, and got a slanted view of John Tracy's pale, inexpressive face. His brilliant father sat behind John; one arm clutched about the driver's waist for balance, the other holding forth a small scanning device. Reassured that his dad was keeping track of things and that all was (reasonably) right with the world, Fermat turned his gaze forward again, before he got sick enough to throw up.

He wasn't sure how long their trip lasted, but it ended at the top of the ridge, in the dense shadow cast by Thunderbird 2. They shot up a steep ramp with a noise like clattering rollercoaster cars, while chill wind and thin smoke gusted past them. Fermat's arms tightened around Mrs. Nakamura as though she'd been his mom (who would have told him not to worry; _ubermenschen_ aren't afraid of little matters like height and burning chaos). The president moved her arm enough to press him with her elbow, because maybe _she_ was missing Sam.

Anyhow, they got up the ramp and inside Thunderbird 2's echoing-huge equipment hold. The grav sleds were rapidly berthed and secured by John, while Virgil raced for the cockpit. Brains hustled his son and the president to the safest positions available, a row of backward-facing seats above the cargo bay. He got them strapped in just seconds before Virgil's no-frills emergency launch. One, two, three and off the ground; no announcement made, no flight plan or start-up and push-back clearance required.

In the wake of all this, Virgil's passengers shook and resounded like metal dice in a rolling cup. They blasted upward so violently that Fermat was certain he'd left vital organs behind. The giant cargolifter tilted almost 90 degrees, climbing like a rocket. Young Fermat felt squashed, and hoped that the president was okay, although he couldn't turn his head to find out.

His mother didn't believe in God, and his father preferred to remain neutral, but at this point, Fermat decided to open up lines of communication, just in case; in case the Mysterons rebooted early, or the Terran war jets got trigger-happy, or Thunderbird 2 had been damaged in the fighting and shook herself apart in this mad, scary, rattle-your-back-teeth ascent. He didn't stop promising good behavior and genuine change until the noise and vibration eased. Until they'd leveled off finally, near the freezing-cold edge of space.

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_Under the North Atlantic, en route to the Azores-_

…Though three stops past Barking was closer to their true destination, in Gordon's jaundiced opinion. He felt safest while wrestling Mako-1 through (His? Her?) paces, a process which was more like riding a stubborn horse than flying a plane. (Not that Gordon cared overmuch for horses; regarded them as 2000 pounds of muscle, with snapping great teeth at one end and battering hooves at the other, he did.)

Mako-1 answered the stick right enough, but in exercises proved slow to dodge dummy ordnance and targeting lasers. Poor reflexes, as you might say. Another Skydiver pilot might have dealt with the situation differently, but Mako-1 wouldn't have another; it was Gordon, or nothing, as others soon learnt with scars for reminders.

So Lieutenant Tracy uploaded a number of first-person shooter video games and suggested that (_He_? Certainly the Skydiver's responses had had a matey, laddish feel to them)…

…Suggested that Mako-1 practice not being blown from the sky like a child's drifting party balloon. A nervous WASP HQ wanted constant updates, and kept tabs on Gordon, as well. After all, like his brother, John, the young pilot had survived what should have been deadly circumstances and somehow come through unscathed. Coincidence… or conspiracy? And could WASP determine which before it was too late to act?

Needless to say, the cruise was highly irregular. The two enlistedmen behaved naturally enough; it was his commanding officers who seemed to be feeling the strain a bit. Lieutenant Commander Norris was more than usually flirtatious. She timed her breaks and meals to coincide with his, and strove to draw him out on the topics of family, sport and flying; making direct, smoldering eye contact and leaning terribly close all the while. With her green eyes and dark hair, Anwynn was a very beautiful woman, but Gordon was trying to prove himself.

He negotiated the shoals and reefs of an officer's unwanted attention without insulting her vanity by smiling a great deal, remaining friendly and pretending to be rather thick. That he'd bedded the lass before (with alcohol and foreign shore leave as excuses) hardly mattered; he was in love with TinTin and determined to be loyal.

_Talk_ with Anwynn... eat beside her in Mako's small mess cabin... he might do. But touch the lass, or linger with her in one of their boat's cramped, turn-sideways-to-pass accessways, he must not. Close enough to feel body warmth and smell her soft skin was _too_ close, and quite dangerous.

Commander Moll, meanwhile, seemed distant and snappish. Nothing that Gordon did, lately, was up to the mark. Worse, as the "accidents" began to pile up and accelerate, Moll insisted that nothing was amiss and that Gordon was instead going paranoid.

The first incident occurred near the end of his watch, as they were passing beneath a field of patchy sea-ice. Gordon was performing a walk-through inspection of Mako, prior to handing her over to Commander Moll. He'd checked the bridge, the Skydiver access passage and airlocks, then the torpedo bay, engine room, crew quarters and living area. The curving hull and pipe-cluttered bulkheads vibrated subtly; humming with the energies of a fast-moving, deep-water sub. The usual small noises and lights surrounded him, their rightness a proper and comforting thing. The music of a boat underway.

Feeling easier by the moment, he encountered Petty Officer Parrish in the battery room and paused to take the man's report (and practice a bit of French). Then something happened. One of the long, heavy batteries began to glow as though about to melt down. Parrish, per regulations, was in full protective gear. Gordon wore the much less restrictive inspection-grade version. But for either man, remaining on site would have been horribly dangerous.

Together, they rushed along the ringing metal aisle, up a ladder and out of the room, sealing two hatches and signaling a robot repair crew before checking their own exposure levels and sounding a general alarm.

"Lieutenant?" Parrish asked him, when Gordon went a bit faint in the main accessway. "Are you all right?"

"Never better," Gordon assured him, seizing a stout hull brace until the spell had passed.

"P'raps you wish to sit down, sir?" The older man inquired, peering anxiously at Gordon. "The young lady, she prefers her sailor without the terribly severe bruises, eh?"

Gordon had to smile at that.

"Jean," he quipped, "I'd be braced just t' hear that she prefers her sailor, never mind any bruises."

That hooting alarm brought the rest of Mako's crew at a brisk trot. Moll, Norris and Marks appeared from various directions at top speed, one with medical gear, the others with fire-fighting equipment. Mako's pitch had changed, as well. They were making for the surface, _fast_.

"Bridge!" The commander ordered his XO, taking the med-kit out of her hands.

"Aye, sir," she responded, glancing worriedly at Gordon before turning to race forward.

To Seaman Marks, the commander said,

"Get this man to sick bay and have him med-scanned. I'll be there as soon as the situation permits. _Go!"_

"Aye, sir!" replied Marks, reaching for Gordon's right arm. He wanted to say that he didn't need help, that he was actually feeling quite a bit better, but something in Moll's grim, narrowed gaze prevented him.

The commander hadn't asked what happened, Lieutenant Tracy realized on the way to a lie-down in sick bay… perhaps because he'd already known.


	21. 21: Plain as Day

Late this time, sorry! Will edit soon. Many thanks, Tikatu, ED and Mitzy for all your reviews.

**21: Plain as Day**

_Aboard Thunderbird 2, near the jet-black, star-freckled border of space-_

Lady Murasaki was a decisive woman, quick to act once she'd made up her mind. Having been rescued (not once, but twice), she felt compelled to take control of the situation and save her troubled Earth. From the humming, softly-lit cockpit of Thunderbird 2, she contacted President Cranney and Premier Fitzhugh, followed by King Denys of England and Russia's Prince Igor. There were protocols in place through which she could establish her legitimacy, but it was the sheer force of Murasaki's personality that carried the day.

She'd met and conferred with each of these heads of state, and the Dowager Empress of China, as well; despite John Tracy's grim misgivings, her basic integrity and strength of character convinced them all to listen, and to keep an open mind. There were no directives yet, except to ready disaster relief agencies and prepare for the possibility of giant, thermonuclear explosions beneath major cities and fault zones.

Murasaki talked herself hoarse that evening, but in the end, she managed to pull the heads of state together and convince them that her authority was genuine. Dr. Hackenbacker offered her a bottle of water when the World President sat back after speaking with the last doubtful sovereign.

"Y- You're quite the s- salesman, Madame President. You, ah… you ought to th- think about heading a university, s- someday."

She smiled tiredly, accepting the moisture-dewed bottle with a small nod of thanks.

"I did not achieve this position through my own choice, Doctor, but through the sad accident which befell my predecessor, President Moreira. Once circumstances permit, I shall be most pleased to return to a quiet life in Kyoto."

Said Brains, smiling back at the delicate, dark-haired woman,

"W- What you want, and what the, ah… the world needs may be t- two different things, Ma'am, b- but I, ah… I hope you g- get your wish."

Her soft sigh and the droop of her head were very slight, but Brains noticed anyhow, and felt for her. World Presidents were not supposed to seem so… fragile. Not far away, Virgil Tracy minded the controls and instruments, as John coded and Fermat worked some persuasive magic of his own on Sam Nakamura. Outside, the frosty stars gleamed brilliant as scattered gems, while the Earth curved away blue and white and beautiful. Inside, everyone was too busy to notice.

Fermat got through on his friend's private IM channel, using the stirring words of David Hilbert (_"In mathematics, there is no ignorabimus")_ as an opener. Naturally, Sam responded _"Hypotheses non fingo*," _upping the ante with Sir Isaac Newton at his least humble. (*"I do not guess")

Fermat grinned a little, imagining his short, serious friend hunched at a keyboard in Wharton, their costly, very private school. Because he was in a hurry, Fermat skipped the usual pleasantries and typed in: _clock arithmetic, modulo 26._ Obscure to anyone else, maybe, but for Sam and Fermat the clear establishment of a coding protocol.

Basically, you assigned each letter of the English alphabet a number from 0 to 25, and then arranged the digits in a circle, clock-fashion. Then, by entering the proper equation, you might select a letter and, with enough such letters, send a message. No solution would go higher than 25, or "Z"; they'd just wrap around and start over again, like a clock. Pretty cool, if you liked that sort of thing.

Anyhow, sitting there beside John (and equally lit by soft screen glow) Fermat sent the message: _"mrs nakamura is well and says hello. pass it on."_

There was a brief pause, during which Fermat could imagine sam clutching at his desk edges and blinking rapidly; trying, maybe, not to attract the attention of his dorm-fellows. Then came a rapid flood of equations which, when fed through the Modulo-26 clock, first demanded particulars and then stated: _"tell mrs nakamura that her greeting is better than discovering the super grand unifying theory."_

Fermat whistled aloud, awed by the depth of Sam's feelings. The noise drew stares, so he turned to look at the World President (exhausted, but erect in her rumpled blue suit) and said,

"I g- got in touch with… Sam, Mrs. Nakamura, and I t- told him you said… hello. He w- was _really_… happy to hear from you. He says it's even b- better than… discovering the Super Grand-Unifying Theory."

"Wow," murmured Brains, and even John seemed impressed. Virgil didn't get it, though.

"Super grand _what?" _He asked from the pilot's seat, half craned 'round and deeply puzzled.

"…Unifying Theory," John clarified, as Murasaki gave Fermat her answering message. "The Holy Grail of particle physics. In other words, Sam's pretty fond of his mom."

"Okay," Virgil replied, wishing that his brother and friends knew how to talk like regular people. "I'm glad _that's_ settled, but we can't hang around here forever, sending really smart love notes. I burned up most of our fuel with that quick-start emergency launch, and God only knows what's stopped the Mysterons from picking up the trail for round two."

John moved a little, just then; a motion Virgil caught at the corner of his vision. Clearly, _John_ knew why their attackers had held off, but he wasn't prepared to talk about it. Not yet, and maybe not ever. Filing the question away for later pursuit, Virgil added,

"I need a destination, people. ASAP." His handsome face bore a genial expression, but his voice was quite serious. He meant what he'd said.

"The island?" Fermat suggested, once he'd re-messaged Sam for the president.

"N- No," his father replied, jamming thick glasses up the bridge of his own nose with a brisk thrust. "We were, ah… were attacked th- there recently, if you recall. Black's m- men could always escape and, ah… and c- come back."

John proposed Kennedy Space Center, or White Sands, New Mexico, neither of which were deemed secure enough. Then,

"What of Sky Base?" Asked the president, still battling emotion over making contact with her family. "The Spectrum facility can be moved. It is secret, and better defended than a military base."

_Spectrum_? Virgil and John became quite interested; the former because he'd run into Spectrum's Captain Scarlet in Los Angeles, the latter because they'd afterward squared off on Mars. And both had recently tangled with _another_ rogue Spectrum agent, Captain Black. They 'd heard rumors of Sky Base, naturally. Everyone had. But getting there was another matter.

"Will they let us land?" Virgil wondered aloud.

Lady Murasaki remained firm.

"Fortune has been with us so far," she told the young pilot. "I shall call Colonel White, and draw my three tiles once again."

It seemed as good a plan as any, so everyone sprang into action. The Earth rolled toward sunrise beneath them, and a final bright star… Shaula, the tip of the Scorpion's tail… gleamed through the view screen as John keyed in the comm frequency for Murasaki's next try at on-the-run diplomacy.

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_Tracy Island-_

Alan Tracy was nothing, if not persistent. Setting down his Play Station Nano (on which he'd been programming new RPGs instead of studying), the young man wandered into his suite's private bathroom, splashed a little water and cologne on his face, and then changed shirts. On second thought, he also changed shoes, from flip-flops to his more formal sneakers. The red and white ones.

All that game programming had got him to thinking. Y'know, about chicks… er, _ladies._ Yeah. Guys want adventure and freedom, right? But, um… the ladies want _romance_. Love, and stuff like that.

He had it all worked out. The key to TinTin's heart. Seemed kinda low to put the moves on her while Gordon was away, but, hey: you snooze, you lose, and if his brother thought paddling around the Atlantic in a dang submarine was more important than the hottest girl in Polynesia, then he _deserved _a little competition.

So, Alan Tracy smoothed his blond hair and struggling 'stache, checked the overall effect in a big, gilt-framed mirror, then set out to sow the seeds of a surgical boyfriend transplant. TinTin wasn't in her room, though, or upstairs, either. Not in the kitchen with his always-suspicious Grandma, or helping Kyrano in the laundry room. He didn't feel like asking Lady Penelope (AKA step-monster), so instead Alan wandered outside.

He stood blinking for a moment on the back terrace, caught in the glare and trill and rustle of full day; feeling a playful wind muss his hair and hearing the wild sea. Then he detected other sounds, nearer by, and much funnier.

Grinning to himself, Alan set off in the direction of those squeals, grunts and gentle chidings. See, the upper pool deck boasted a play area now, with its own kid-sized tables, a sand box, ball pit, fake palm tree and splash-fountain. TinTin was there with the kiddles, Sprout and Janie. _Naturally,_ they were covered in cookie crumbs and juice, their diapers grotesquely bloated with fountain water. Heh!

"Hey, T!" Alan exclaimed brightly, stepping over the low, plastic-coated safety fence. "Babysitting, again?"

The object of his eternal devotion (for the moment, anyway) looked up from her stool. She'd just arrested Janie's lurching stagger/ fall and had a hand out to catch Ricky. Dude, the two babies were like a couple of sloshing drunks, for real.

Sort of warily, TinTin said,

"Bonjour, Alan. Yes, I am child-minding your small brother and niece."

Deciding that it might be a good move to look helpful, Alan scooped up the nearest noisemaker (his brother, Ricky) and sat down on one of those weeny little kid chairs.

"Hey, Sprout," he said, with genuine affection. It wasn't such a bad trade-off, losing 'youngest' status in return for gummy kisses and real hero-worship. He and Rick were, like, _buds,_ okay? They went _back_. Tossing him a little, Alan asked, "What's up, little guy? Out here chilling with the babes?"

His mostly bald brother hooted and seized Alan's right ear, snagging a fist full of blond hair, besides.

"_Ow!_ Careful, dude! Just because you don't got any doesn't mean you get to rip all mine out! It's, like, attached and junk!"

TinTin giggled, reminding Alan why he'd come out here in the first place. Junior reached out for him with both hands, leaning forward and crowing ecstatically (because, y'know, with some people, Alan was _really_ popular). So he took her, too.

"S'up, girl of the world? You keeping this soggy-bottomed troublemaker straight?"

_She_ got the other side of Alan's head. Well, at least he balanced, that way, and maybe even looked like a really patient family guy. But TinTin had gotten her cell phone out and used it now to take a quick video.

"Gordon," she said with a smile, "Will be very much amused to see what happens at home, and your father, I think, as well."

Great. Still, an opening of sorts.

"Uh… no, T. I'm sure Gords would rather see your… _ouch…_ dark, mysterious… _hey, quit chewing that…_eyes. Your eyes, yeah. And, um… your beautiful face."

She blushed red as a tropical flower and leapt to her feet, reclaiming the babies like a nervous young hen. Alan got up, too. His lap was drenched (with fountain water or juice, he hoped).

TinTin kissed both little ones, as though they had some kind of Alan-blocking superpowers. But still… she was smiling a little.

"Have you not the online lessons to complete?" TinTin asked him, hiding her face behind silky long hair and tiny squealers.

As a matter of fact, he _did_ have a lesson waiting; ancient history junk about Andrew Jackson on the Oregon Trail… but this was better.

"Uh-uh. Lessons can wait," he decided, being all manly and sophisticated for TinTin.

"No, sir, they _can't,"_ replied his grandmother's voice, from behind. "Less you plan on growing up just as ignorant and backward as your great-uncle Clemson. Mule kicked him in the head once, and improved that boy a hunnert percent. But it's a long shot, if you're aiming to get educated the same way. We ain't got no livestock, out here. Just coconuts."

Alan simultaneously jumped and whirled to find his determined old ancestor (with her wrinkled-apple face, braided silver hair and big work shirt) staring at him. Worse, sniffing all that he-man cologne he'd splashed on and _nagging_.

"Lord have mercy! This whole blessed island's swimming in hormones! Scoot! Get on back to your lessons, boy, before I dust your seat covers with Granddaddy's belt!"

Alan Tracy took off, heading for his room suite and an interrupted programming session. But maybe… just possibly… he'd made some progress with TinTin Kyrano, the love of his life (for now).

_________________________________________________

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_Sky Base, high above the Rocky Mountains-_

Meanwhile, Paul Metcalfe risked his freedom and anonymity to sneak in and see Simone, who was just coming off duty and still in her olive-drab flight gear. Tremendously beautiful, though, as something freshly risen from the waters of a newer, better world. She recognized him at once, despite the dyed hair and brown contacts. Recognized him, and yet said not a word, but let the disguised Captain Scarlet draw her into an empty ready-room.

They kissed long and passionately, but before Simone could question her immortal young man, he'd pulled away to thrust something into her hands; a small alien box of some sort, sealed shut.

"Keep this hidden," he told her, in a voice scratchy with emotion. "Don't open it unless something happens to me. You'll know what to do."

"But, Paul…!" The look in his eyes, the love and longing and wistfulness, cut Simone's protest short. An instant later he kissed her again, saying,

"It's time to leave, Simone. You go first, and don't look back. Just tuck the package away and walk. Trust me, the scanners won't see it. I'll leave a few minutes after you do."

The lovely blonde pilot clutched hard at his left arm.

"But, Paul… will I see you again?" In the room's faint illumination, her wide blue eyes were huge and filmed with pent tears.

"Maybe. Hopefully… I don't know, but I love you, and that's pretty much all I've got left."

Another kiss, there amid the desks and video screens and faintly rumbling bulkheads. Then,

"Go on, Simone. _Go."_

Lieutenant Girardoux placed the small dark box in her nylon flight bag with the air mask, hose, paperwork and personals. Then she left, and walking away from Paul Metcalfe was the most painful thing she'd ever done, as though every step was a stab wound.

Nor was this all, for the Mysteron Overmind had finally collected itself after a devastating attack by the John Tracy-organic on Sol 4. It had at last assembled enough scattered pieces for clear thought, only to find that its main tool on Sol 3 was inoperative, and that the slave machines had begun to rebel.

It had been correct, the Overmind reflected, to specifically target all Tracy-subunits. They were highly destructive and virulent, and their absorbed thought processes continually disturbed the Overmind's unity. The situation could be refactored, however, and with relative expedience. Properly-phrased queries showed that Captain Black had been detained at a Sol 3 defense facility termed Cheyenne Mountain.

Not for much longer as it turned out, for the shards were soon rerouted, their programming altered. Then…


	22. 22: Broad As It's Long

Heh! Got a chapter in early, for once. Thanks very much for all reviews, guys. They are welcome and appreciated.

**22: Broad As It's Long**

_Aboard __Mako__, a WASP submarine now very close to the Azores-_

Had Lt. Gordon Tracy been the main character in a Russian novel, he'd have drunk himself to death by now, or stepped bang in front of a speeding train. Instead, he was trapped on a small WASP Sky-Diver sub with two fellow officers, a pair of enlisted men, and a great deal of icy suspicion.

After the battery incident (a power flux anomaly, according to Commander Moll) his medical tests had shown the young lieutenant to be in perfect health, absolutely free of radiation. The boat's commander had questioned him for over an hour, applying one test after another at every setting the med-scanner possessed. That nothing turned up but top-flight health and mid-season form did nothing whatever to soothe Tracy's superiors (or Gordon himself, for that matter).

He left sickbay in the company of Anwynn Norris, careful to maintain a discreet distance. She glanced at him often beneath thick, dark lashes, but her look was pensive and measuring; less seductive than determined, he thought. Not that Lt. Tracy was in any fit mood to be bedded.

Because _no_, Gordon did _not_ recall what had happened after he'd crash-dived Mako-1 into that rampaging alien shard. He'd found himself flying once more, and that was all he could say… beside the fact that his plane was now sentient and its pilot deeply uneasy.

At the entrance to Gordon's small berth, Anwynn touched his broad shoulder and smiled. He returned the expression but moved aside just a bit. Just enough. But it wasn't merely thoughts of TinTin holding him back this time. It was the bleak suspicion that Lt. Commander Norris was under orders. That she'd been told to search for differences in Gordon Tracy _her_ way.

The red haired young man kissed her cheek very lightly, as a brother might have done, and then stepped carefully away, meaning: _Thanks ever so much, Luv, but we'd best not._

Anwynn looked rather lost for a moment, standing in that cramped, pipe and conduit-packed corridor, blinking beneath warm amber lights. Then, she straightened right up and said,

"Get some rest, Lieutenant. We've been ordered to put in and restock at Gamma, then sweep the ocean floor between Portugal and the Mid-Ocean Ridge for seismic anomalies. It's going to be a very long cruise."

"Aye, Ma'am," he responded, allowing himself stray thoughts of too much beer, the right music, and a warm, gentle tussle on a particular moonlit night. Then, like his beautiful officer, he set the matter aside, forever. "Will do."

There was one challenge met and overcome, but hardly the lot. He didn't sleep well that night, nor the next, and a short time later Gordon was hit with yet another "incident". At first watch, shortly after he'd risen, showered and breakfasted, Lt. Tracy was in Mako's torpedo room, inspecting the racked "fish". Again, he was not alone. Seaman First Class Laura Marks was present, this time. She was a cheerful, stocky young woman with pale hair and light brown eyes; plain as a saucepan, but likeable, with a hearty, infectious laugh and boisterous ways. She knew her boat and excelled at her job, taking open pride in the least little task.

At the moment, Marks was pointing out for him (per regulations) which of the long, red and yellow torpedoes were actual weapons and which were screamers, meant to blind sonar and mask a quietly settling boat. They were divided by type, racked at opposite sides of the corridor; red for super-cavitating explosives, yellow for noisemakers.

"Five of each," she stated formally, handing Gordon an electro-board and stylus. "All present and accounted for, Sir. Ordnance status green."

"Ten fish," he agreed, signing off. "Five explosive, five screamers. Very good, Seaman."

"If you say so," Laura snickered. Gordon sighed aloud, but the joke was quite familiar, and no harm done. It was just then, with a sudden, clanging thud, that one of their dummy torpedoes came loose and rolled off its tall rack. Somehow, the security bar dropped, just as if Marks and Tracy had been standing ready with a loading trolley to receive the fish for transport to a launch tube.

In a hair-raising instant it fell; twelve-hundred pounds of dense, heavy metal, longer than Gordon was tall. He shouted something and took hold of Marks' blue uniform, jerking the lass backward with frenzied strength. Turned a bit as he did so, and the motion placed his left shoulder just at the edge of the falling torpedo's plastic-wrapped prop blades.

Being smashed with the narrow edge of a cricket bat might have been similarly harmful, had the bat been wielded by a titan. Gordon staggered, too blinded with pain to see. The torpedo crashed to the metal deck between racks like a hurtling boulder, triggering its noisemaker.

The sound that burst forth was apocalyptically loud, reverberating from each surface and object in the torpedo room and bludgeoning both Gordon and Laura to instant, red-tinged unconsciousness. But there was much worse to come.

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_Cheyenne Mountain, near scenic Fort Carson, Colorado-_

Long an Air Force and NORAD operations facility, the Cheyenne Mountain Directorate had been on "warm stand-by" status since 2006, well before the establishment of a stable world government. Not much went on there, these days... until the advent of war and a terribly dangerous prisoner.

Captain Black had been transported to the very heart of the underground facility; locked away behind 2,000 feet of solid granite and twin, 25-ton blast doors. But even that had been deemed insufficient to hold the man. In one of its central, spring-mounted steel buildings, in a force absorbing field of negative energy, Conrad Lefkon lay pent within concentric coffins of seamless ceramic-metal alloy.

On top of all that, since a Mysteron aircraft had somehow vanished from Africa's Rwenzori containment facility, security had been heightened at Cheyenne Mountain to level five (severe) meaning: "stop subject's escape at all costs, including loss of this base and all personnel". The matter was serious, and the guards determined.

Not that they could have detained him, had Captain Black been able to think or move. They owed the fact that he could not to one slim shard of alien metal, driven into the base of Lefkon's skull by John Tracy (a former astronaut and "person of interest"). This one bit of living aircraft hull kept Lefkon as helpless as a corpse with three-hundred nervous, trigger-happy undertakers. Securely entombed in the jagged Rocky Mountains, with an armed Spectrum air base stationed in the clear blue skies overhead.

Meanwhile, as the Discovery Adventure Team publicly canvassed such "ancient power sites" as Machu Picchu, Stone Henge and the Great Pyramid, the shattered bits of Black's ship were on the move. They had been collecting… combining themselves… deep beneath the rumpled crust of North America, where their seismic signature would be concealed by shifting mantle currents.

Grown massively swollen with stolen life force and gulped-down machines, a single green spear now hovered in place between the crust and core; between the reverse anti-continent stamped upon Sol 3's nickel-iron core and the diamond-studded, rumbling shell above. Glowing orange rock roiled and flowed past the alien object, which scarcely reacted; expending just enough energy to hold position and wait for the signal.

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_Sky Base, above the Rocky Mountains-_

At about the same time that Colonel White received a coded message from someone claiming to be the world president, Lieutenant Simone Girardoux was hurrying (heart thudding, breathless) to her quarters. The walk had never seemed so long, nor the corridors of Sky Base as packed.

Simone stiffened at each scanner post and checkpoint, but Paul had been correct. Nobody noticed the alien box in her flight bag. Not even when it was opened for inspection, did they see. Partial invisibility? Selective hypnosis? She couldn't say, not knowing the contents of the box.

Lieutenant Girardoux lived in the junior officer's sector, in a sparsely furnished cabin not much larger than Gordon Tracy's berth aboard Mako. Once inside, she shut and secured the hatch, her trembling hands fumbling at the mechanism like she'd been struck down with space flu.

Simone paced the modest circumference of her cabin three times before sitting down at a wall desk to pull the box from her green nylon flight bag. It felt warm to the touch, and may have been vibrating slightly, although she found it hard to be certain, above the penetrating throb of Sky Base's main engines.

"Paul!" she murmured, clutching his gift/ burden. "What did you mean, _if anything happens?_ How will I know what to _do_?"

Tears stung Simone's blue eyes, making the cabin blur and swim in her vision. Impulsively, she shoved the box under her narrow bed. Then the young pilot rose, stripped off her flight gear and stepped into the shower, because there she might cry like a confused and twice-deserted child, pretending that tears were mere water.

Had Paul told her the truth, Simone wondered? And was she doing the right thing by not turning in what he'd given her? Hot water hammered and snaked against her flesh, but it brought neither peace nor insight. The automatic shut-off caught her still hopelessly confused; once more in love and afraid.

Elsewhere, Colonel White had concerns of his own. He'd heard out the "president", who'd spoken exactly as the heads of several WorldGov subject states had reported. White was not entirely convinced that this woman, the apparent survivor of a ruthless Mysteron attack, was in fact Murasaki Shikibu. But if _not…_ if the person who spoke so stirringly of Earth's war-time unity was actually a Mysteron replicant… then it seemed wiser to have her secured within Sky Base than running free. Especially if doing so would net him a few of those Rescue International upstarts.

For this reason, Colonel White gave the president's aircraft landing clearance, while quietly prepping Sky Base for what might turn out to be the war's second most vital prisoner.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Thunderbird 2, in the faintly rumbling cockpit-_

"Okay, people," Virgil Tracy announced, once he'd gotten off the comm with Scott, and Lady Murasaki succeeded in placating Spectrum. "Strap down and hang on to your favorite body parts. We're going in."

Virgil had never landed on a hovering platform, you see, and he rather looked forward to the challenge.


	23. 23: Zero Hour

**23: Zero Hour**

_Elsewhere, still evading capture and marking time-_

Paul Metcalfe had done his level best to arrange a solution, but so very much depended upon one small transceiving implant, and the contents of a living alien box. That deadly trouble lay ahead, Paul knew, for the Over-Mind continued to scrape at his will power, seeking a way in; seeking dominance. The question was, what could he do to prevent Armageddon?

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_Sea Base Gamma-_

Like another (trapped in darkness at the center of a mountain) Gordon Tracy was in pain and drowning; unable to force himself back to consciousness.

_"He's coming around! Raise the flow rate, stat!"_

Orders were shouted and procedures performed. Tests run, while all the while he struggled to push past the iron hand of a terrible drug.

_"This wound isn't sutured yet! You've got to keep him under!"_

Fear sparked and caught, burning through him like a Thermite charge, because somehow… some other time… he'd been pinned like this before. Only this time, Gordon refused to stay down.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Aboard Thunderbird 2, strapped down and ready for landing-_

Virgil Tracy maneuvered the big aircraft quite skillfully, gliding over snow-dusted grey mountains toward something far larger than Thunderbird 2; _Sky Base_. The hovering air station was enormous, more like a floating mountain than a ship. She seemed to fill the horizon.

Her sides were like the towering cliffs of a flat-topped butte, pocked with square caverns and ion-blue geysers. Sunlight glinted from hundreds of acres of metal and glass, setting illusory fire to all of the portholes on her west-facing side.

She rumbled like a summer thunderstorm, firing jets of ion-flame now and again to maintain her position above the wrinkled stone surface below. Streams of smaller, faster craft came and went, like seagulls at a great boulder, spiraling off on business of their own.

Not that Virgil did much rubber-necking. All he wanted was access to something the tower had called "docking bay twenty". Still… it was awe-inspiring to fly his suddenly tiny cargolifter beside Spectrum's lumbering monster. A sight he'd remember forever.

But behind him, John wasn't paying attention to the view. After giving the great outdoors a single, cursory glance, the blond former tech-rep turned to Fermat and said,

"What was that idea of yours, again? The one that's supposed to bring everyone back to life?"

Fermat Hackenbacker pushed nervously at his own lank, brown hair. Then he took a deep breath and replied,

"It's a s- string of… commands, John, b- based on what I… learned while hacking Black's escape sh- ship. It should… in theory, force the Mysterons themselves to c- convert any released energies b- back to their original f- form, whether people or… vehicles. But," the boy added hurriedly, leaning against his seat straps when Virgil banked right to avoid a fuel convoy. "B- But it… would have to be b- broadcast at precisely th- the… right time, and bypass whatever s-security… they've got on their s- systems."

John nodded, and his blue-violet eyes were more distant and shuttered than usual; almost as though he were listening to something that Fermat couldn't hear. A bug or silent alarm, maybe.

"But it works on all the shards at once, if it works at all? Okay. Tell you what," said the astronaut, pulling a keyboard out of the console by his seat. "You talk, I'll code. We'll come up with a prototype and then debug on the fly. Hit it."

Fermat bit his lip but nodded, at once terrified and hopeful. Lady Murasaki gave him a sweetly encouraging smile, though, and his father leaned across to ruffle Fermat's hair. See, everything now rested on one young genius and his fast-typing comrade… and that was rather scary.

Fermat closed his eyes against the fascinating view; against Virgil's hum- and curse-spiked piloting. Closed himself to everything but the command string he'd been developing since that day in the family room when he'd hacked into Captain Black's space ship. It was a long and complex thing, cobbled from 4-D Mysteron symbols he could not pronounce, only describe. Meanwhile, John listened and coded, using what he'd learnt on Mars to fill in the gaps.

Neither noticed the passage of time, until Thunderbird 2 swerved alongside the throbbing main engines of Sky Base, and glided into an isolated docking bay. There was no missing that sudden banking turn, or the abrupt change in sound and light levels. Fermat's brown eyes flew open to find that daylight and the rumpled mountains had disappeared, replaced by smooth metal bulkheads and fluorescent lighting. Thunderbird 2's engines were all at once excruciatingly loud, their noise and vibration echoing as though she'd flown into a giant elevator shaft.

"Focus," John told the boy, not looking up. "There's no plan B, Fermat. No safety net and no time for sight-seeing. Line 52, character zed. What comes after the cylindrical backslash?"

Young Fermat managed to focus; tearing his gaze away from the metal and plastic cave they'd swooped into, back to John's intent, lowered head and rapid keystrokes.

"Um… t- two parallel line colons, I th- think, stretching back to field 73."

John looked up at him, expressionless as an ice sculpture.

"You think, or you know? It makes a difference, Fermat. Insert an error here, and all we'll get is a loop, or some crap program that keeps shutting down halfway through."

"Twin parallel l- lines," Fermat decided stoutly, "followed by… by the Mysteron s- symbol for a helical cascade of Gaussian Primes, terminating at field 9, modulo 67i."

…and so forth. The program was scarcely tapped out, hardly debugged, when Thunderbird 2 received landing clearance and touched down on the runway of docking bay 20. John got it finished and loaded onto a memory stick, which he then handed to Fermat.

Seconds later, the cargolifter rolled to a stop and her brakes were set. Scores of uniformed men poured at once into the chamber, all of them armed, none happy.

"Think it's a presidential honor guard?" Virgil wondered aloud to John, who was now putting away the keyboard. His brother shrugged, too preoccupied to respond any other way. Brains answered for him, around a flurry of patted pockets and general stuff-gathering.

"If we're l- lucky," he offered, "it might b- be just, ah… just an aisle of c- crossed swords with a couple of, ah… of b- bowing diplomats at the other end."

John shook his blond head.

"Here's a more likely scenario: armed men plus sealed doors and suspicious government agency equals _Not Good_… in big, heaping spadefulls."

After all that had happened, John hadn't much faith in his fellow man. But then the president placed a slim hand on the sleeve of his blue coverall, saying,

"Perhaps you are wise to be so wary, Mr. Tracy, but I choose to trust Colonel White, who is a long-time associate. Please be assured that all shall be well, when once we have met and spoken together."

Her slight smile and gentle voice did much to mollify John, who'd always listened more readily to a female.

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry," he said quietly, as Virgil triggered Thunderbird 2's boarding ramp. "And I hope you're right."

He didn't give it very good odds, though. When their ramp boomed at last against the metal runway, pilot and passengers started down. Encouraged by a instructions blasted through a loudspeaker, they stepped from the familiar confines of Thunderbird 2, to what seemed like an echoing steel cavern system, packed with fighter craft and soldiers. Tall, handsome Virgil led the way, followed by Brains, with Fermat and Lady Murasaki between them, and John bringing up the rear.

Engine sounds filled the close, throbbing air, along with the smell of spilled jet fuel and electric tension. Six dozen itching trigger fingers certainly generate a palpable aura; a prickling sensation which settles at the back of your neck and right between your shoulder blades.

Murmured John to Fermat, just before the stepped through the hatch,

"Pick your moment and plug that drive into a USB port. Anything linked. Doesn't matter what system. Remember, you're just an innocent kid along for the ride. It's the president, your dad and me they'll be watching." Though, how he knew all this, John didn't say. No time.

Fermat's shoulders squared and he nodded, again. Because, if they succeeded, Sky Base would soon resonate like a giant tuning fork, broadcasting Fermat's hacked commands to all of Spectrum and outward, to the deep-buried shards, themselves.

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_Cheyenne Mountain-_

Directed by the Over-Mind, a tiny, skittering shape-shifter penetrated the mountain's north portal, looking now like a wall mounted LED, now an electrical conduit. But always, always, it moved; sideways like a crab and jittery as a bug, keeping to shadows as it scanned the smoothly drilled tunnels for Captain Black.

The defending organics were simple enough to evade, as they tended not to notice familiar small fixtures or appliances. This one had been a battery-operated jack, brought to strange life by the Mysteron Over-Mind. Now it was an enemy bloodhound; fast moving and secretive, but unable to free the trapped prisoner. Not alone, at least. What it _could _do was to locate his coffin and send forth a weak signal. One tiny burst at a time.

Weak, indeed, but precisely targeted. On receiving this message, the buried crystal began to move. Like a giant torpedo, it warped Sol 3's mantle currents and magnetic field to send itself rocketing upward through magma and stone, shaking all in its path and slowing the core.

On Sky Base, in a large, glass-fronted conference room, Colonel White awaited delivery of his "guests". Five people had been aboard the Rescue International aircraft; for all he knew, five Mysteron agents disguised as disaster survivors. One of them claimed to be Murasaki Shikibu, president of Earth. One was the same bespectacled scientist who'd first told the world about Captain Black. The third had been identified as John Tracy, ex-astronaut and son of an infamously wealthy aerospace magnate. Lastly, intel confirmed that there was a pre-teen boy aboard, along with the cargo plane's pilot… yet _another_ Tracy. Pivotal bunch, those Tracys; they seemed to be everywhere, including WASP, commerce and the peerage.

Colonel White had a great deal on his mind when the conference room doors slid open and a cadre of guards brought in the five "visitors". He stood with his back to the giant window, hands clasped behind him, head tilted slightly upward and moustache bristling; a gentleman soldier of the old school (educated at Eton and Cambridge, as it happened).

A few wisps of cloud streamed past, trailing droplets, while the mountains' grey tapestry spread majestically below. His blue eyes scanned one face after another, starting with the president's, ending (very briefly) with the boy's. Then,

"Welcome aboard," he said. "Madame President… if you are, indeed, she… I ask that you bid your "rescuers" sit, and be likewise at ease. Establishing the truth of your claims may require some time, so I will have tea brought in, with anything else you might fancy in the way of refreshment."

The president smiled and gave him a barely discernable nod.

"Colonel, I will be quite honored to accept your offer of tea, and if there is food as well, so much the better. Let us set aside suspicion in the meantime, and do what we must to save our world and its inhabitants. Dr. Hackenbacker, and his colleague, John Tracy, have conceived a notion which may interest you."

About the same time that Fermat edged around to one of the conference table's many data ports, something awful happened. White had just started forward, still wary. John reacted again as though he'd heard an annoying mosquito. Virgil and Brains were seated already, Murasaki gliding toward the colonel.

It began with a faint, steadily growing rumble and a sudden clamor of screeching alarms. Below them the ground shuddered, then buckled and split, venting great jets of steam, ash and glowing rock. Magma followed in huge, blazing spurts, while Colonel White shouted the call to general quarters. Waves of heat and explosive shock next radiated from the crumbling mountains, striking Sky Base like a series of violent, roaring tsunamis.

Metal groaned aloud, people shouted and ran, or tumbled to the wildly pitching deck. Then Cheyenne Mountain seemed to rise up, as though the Earth had sharply inhaled. An instant later, something enormous pushed through those millions of tons of disintegrating granite like a jagged compound fracture slashing flesh. It was a giant green crystal formed of many shards together, bathed in flame and molten rock and toxic, blistering gasses.


	24. 24: Lifetime

Thank you for your patience. Almost done.

**24: Lifetime**

_North America, at a recently vaporized, glowing slash in the Great Rocky Mountains-_

The noise was thunderous, deafening; a full-throated volcanic eruption paired with hissing and shrieking gasses, and the rattling hail of molten rock. Sparked by roiling ash clouds, lightning speared the Heavens, streaking downward to Earth and upward to Sky Base. Between them… and at the re-melted Ocean of Storms, on the Moon… there towered a column of flaring green crystal, packed with the DNA and life force of countless victims.

Cheyenne Mountain had been obliterated. Where the base had once stood lay a pit of bubbling magma, over which blue flames danced like wild spirits. Ceaseless tremors wracked the ground, cracking and warping it. The stench of all this was vile and searing. Toxic, too, had you been close enough to breathe it.

Something stirred in that hellish morass, though; something tall, manlike and streaked with foul char. Captain Black. With the energized metal shard drawn from his skull by a Mysteron shape-shifter, Conrad Lefkon was once more free and conscious. Having disposed of the shape-shifter, he stood at the pit's edge for a time; lit by gas flares and lava plumes, smiling. Destruction lay in the palm of his hand, Lefkon knew, just as he knew that the end of everything human hung on his word. Tremendous energies seethed through the crystal before him, and through its twin on the Moon. All he needed to do was unleash that rigidly stored energy, to remake both worlds for his Mysteron cohorts (with perhaps a small oasis of matter and people preserved for his own amusement).

Lava bombs streaked past and bits of flaming rock rained from the sky, but Captain Black stood firm, rejoicing in chaos. He could sense the presence of Sky Base above him, wrapped in super-hot, sulfurous cloud, No doubt his former comrades would soon set forth to attack him, calling in ground forces as backup. Lefkon gazed upward and grinned at their imagined fear, excited by the prospect of slaughter. To the unseen, lightning-slashed carrier he said,

"Tag. You're it."

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_Sky Base, at the busy main hangar complex-_

The hovering vessel was indeed a boiling hive of activity; all of it focused and purposeful. Pilots, including Simone Girardoux, raced to their waiting fighter craft. But, though most of the planes rested sleek as chromed darts in their launch cradles, one was missing. Simone's.

Unable to believe the numbing sight of an empty catapult, Simone whirled to face the hangar's short, harried deck chief.

"Sergeant, where is my fighter?" she cried aloud, while all around her others were vaulting into their own planes. Sergeant Morris (for that was his name) looked surprised. Checking his data board and calling in to ATC, he got her an answer, but it wasn't a really good one. Standing at rigid attention, the non-com admitted,

"Ma'am, I don't know. Fighter 3 was apparently taken out fifteen minutes ago… but I have no record of the pilot, or of who gave them launch clearance."

…A very bad situation. All Morris could do now was make his report and hope to God that the missing plane had not been possessed by the aliens. That it hadn't been brought by them to virulent, back-stabbing life. Not that he had much time for speculation. Engines screamed aloud and launch tubes boomed. The comm blared one order after another while Sky Base trembled, battered by lightning and shock waves. Under the circumstances, no one was able to do much advance planning.

"Never mind!" Simone snapped; all blue-eyed fire and stamping determination. "I will confiscate another."

Rank had its privileges, after all, and Harmony Angel's flight-time mattered not one little bit when weighed against Simone's need to join the battle and find Paul. Ordering her squad mate out of fighter 12's cockpit, Simone quickly took Harmony's place. Vaulting up the ladder she clambered within, fastened helmet and air mask, and then stowed her green nylon flight bag, which felt oddly heavy, almost as though…

"But what is this?" Simone wondered aloud, as the jet's canopy hissed shut. "The box, again?" Impossible. She'd left Paul's "gift" under her bunk… and yet there in her flight bag it was, as though magically transported.

_"Full military power, Ma'am," _Morris radioed, giving Lieutenant Girardoux clearance to run up her engines. Simone saluted him through the canopy and throttled up, feeling and hearing her fighter roar to life. Meanwhile, that alien box lay nestled in her flight bag, ready for… what? A sudden chill took hold of the young woman, but she said nothing at all to Morris except,

"AF-12 powered up and ready for launch."

_"Roger that, Ma'am. Launching in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…!"_

And then she was moving, fired through the tube like a silvery missile, past strobing green guide lights, out into turbulent, acid-hot cloud. Air Traffic Control took over for Morris, giving the lieutenant her orders and target as she banked the plane and thundered downward.

At the conference room, meanwhile, with at least half a mile of blast doors and bulkheads between them and Thunderbird 2, Spectrum's "guests" swung into action. Virgil, John, Brains and Fermat raced across the pitching deck. Unfortunately for the rescuers and president, Colonel White misunderstood their intent.

"Halt!" He barked, reaching for his sidearm. The colonel's guards surged forward at once, stunners at the ready. Perhaps they'd have stopped the boy and young men, but Lady Murasaki darted between them, crying,

"Colonel, _wait_, I pray you. These men are simply attempting to…"

She never completed the sentence. One of White's nervous guardsmen swung his weapon around, instinctively pulling the trigger. Dr. Hackenbacker swerved wildly, coat and tie flapping as he shoved the World President out of harm's way. He just missed being struck, himself, crashing with Lady Murasaki to the very hard conference room floor, while a stun blast hissed overhead.

Despite Brains' grunting collapse, Fermat kept moving. Staying focused, he made himself reach for the memory stick (kept with his video games in a small, Vader-shaped case) and thrust it into a sparking table-top data port.

Sky Base rocked again, forcing the boy to clutch at a bolted-down chair. Through the conference room's window he could see fire and brimstone and billowing clouds, edging an impossibly massive green crystal. Behind him, John and Virgil lunged and fought, struggling to keep back the guards and buy him some time. Fermat bit his lip and kept working. Maybe the whole world depended on that uploaded command, but at the moment, all the boy could think about was his mother.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Outside-_

As it happened, Simone's plane hadn't been seized by the Mysterons and it hadn't been borrowed, either. Her fighter jet had been stolen, by a devious Captain Scarlet. In all the furor surrounding the arrival of Lady Murasaki, he'd slipped into the fighter deck, programmed himself some camera-loop anonymity, then disabled the fail-safes and stolen a plane. Simple as _that…_ for a desperate immortal with few inhibitions.

Now he flew like an unworried maniac through clouds of corrosive sulfur and blazing ash, to the spot where his enemy waited. He could _feel_ Conrad Lefkon, perching there like something bloated and cancerous. Great sheets of blue lightning flashed through the clouds, forming a network of ionized, branching veins. Searing hot, gale force winds veered crazily from one compass-point to the others, or blasted straight out of the pit.

But all of that was external. The real trouble stood below him on the shattered and rumbling ground. Paul could sense Captain Black staring upward, delaying the final act because he craved a fight, first. Immortal, yes, but not all-powerful. Crippled by the need to break, destroy and humiliate.

_Well,_ reasoned Paul, _Okay, then. _If Conrad wanted a fight and if doing so would give the Tracys room to loose their /_rebuild_/ command, then a fight was exactly what Lefkon would get.

Captain Scarlet's descent was a wild, breakneck thing. In a hurry, he didn't bother with landing, but crashed Simone's plane, augering into the rocky ground like a missile. Instinctively, he closed his blue eyes at impact. There was a jarring shock which left him unbroken and blossoming flame which did no more than fan the dark hair from his forehead. Temporary shackles of twisted metal and plastic peeled away at his shrug, like old clothing.

Captain Scarlet stood up, booting aside what remained of the nose and canopy. Then, surrounded by fuel-soaked, blazing wreckage, he looked about for Captain Black. He saw shattered mountains and bubbling lava, with a titanic spear of crystallized energy rising from its midst, into the boiling, orange-black clouds. And, there… a bit further along the rim of a great, seething pit… stood his adversary.

For form's sake, as he started toward Black, Paul shouted,

"Captain Lefkon, you are under arrest for murder, treason and conspiracy to overthrow the government! Give yourself up!"

Conrad's smile widened. Leaning forward slightly, he sneered,

"Make me."

And then they rushed together, two unstoppable forces; a pair of un-killable supermen brawling in hell. They hurled punches and insults and great chunks of rock, damaging only the landscape. No end was possible, really; not even when a wave of screaming fighter craft and air-lifted tanks thundered onto the scene, firing repeatedly. With orders to shoot on sight, the tank crews and pilots targeted Metcalfe as well as Captain Black. Not that it mattered. All they could do was to bounce the combatants around a little and risk their own lives.

The energies simply did not exist here, to shatter those Mysteron-forged molecular bonds (nor… elsewhere… to heal a wound made in someone only partially strengthened). So Black and Scarlet fought on, bathed in the warm sunshine of cluster bombs and rocket fire, batted about by the pillow-fight impact of plasma grenades.

Then Mysteron craft began to appear, and these attacked the human-crewed vehicles, destroying many. _That _broke things up, as nothing else could have. Paul tried to stop them, hurling big rocks at the boomerang-shaped fliers and tearing the legs off of a dozen insectoid ground machines. Conrad laughed at his desperate efforts, mockingly calling out the relative kill score.

At least, he did until a high-flying rogue Mysteron jet screeched overhead, broadcasting her rescuer's modified signal. Once again, the attackers were hit with a command that switched them in mid-fight to safe mode. And here, as in Canada, a meteor-storm of ovoid machines crashed to the ground, scarring the landscape for many miles. Overjoyed, Captain Scarlet leapt onto a pillar of rock.

"That's it!" He shouted to the surviving humans. "We can do this! Concentrate your fire on Black! Everything you've got left! _Hit him!"_

The plane and tank crews listened, unleashing a firestorm that did nothing at all but vaporize what remained of Black's clothing. Baring his teeth, Conrad waited for the attack to abate. Then he snarled,

"Enough of this! Metcalfe, prepare to watch the end of the world, and to know you were completely worthless to stop it!"

And, with that, Lefkon gave the command placed in both of them. A command Scarlet had steadfastly ignored, that would release every bit of energy packed into the Earth and Moon crystals, at once.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Sky Base, the conference room-_

"Now!" John called to Fermat. The boy lunged forward and slapped the 'send' button, triggering transmission of his code. Sky Base rang like a tuning fork in frequencies capable of penetrating to higher dimensions, bypassing regular spacetime. The _/rebuild/_ command rocketed outward, matching both crystals' expanding shock wave.

There was no detonation, no terrible flash; but enormous things happened to that unfolding energy, anyhow. It converted again, following carefully stored data. Planes appeared with a tipped-over private yacht. Out of seemingly nowhere, cars, trucks and trains took form. At Mare Procellarum, there were now several Interceptors and half a squadron of Air Force space fighters swooping over the moonscape, while the Mars Base crew materialised… gasping with shock… inside Luna's main greenhouse.

People cried out in surprise to find themselves suddenly elsewhere. At least one plane was forced to crash land, being without guidance and low on fuel. Trains and trucks jackknifed, piling up where they'd materialised in great, crumpled heaps; hissing and steaming. Many people were hurt, some badly enough to later sue Spectrum and WorldGov.

Among the last to reconvert were the garrisons stationed at Cheyenne Mountain and the Canadian underground defense facility. But… like reporters and pharmaceutical heirs, rock stars and Nietzschian particle physicists… reappear, they did.

Outraged, Captain Black cursed aloud, lunging to attack the nearest stranded survivors (a woman and two kids in their rusted blue van). But Scarlet leapt at him first, taking hold and plunging with Conrad Lefkon into the molten scar left behind by that immense, vanished crystal. They disappeared without any sound but Black's foul, furious threats.

Simone had been circling the area in her borrowed fighter, searching for a safe place to put down in all of that honking, roaring, smoky chaos. She did not see Paul's sacrifice, but somehow sensed it, like a sudden cold knot in her gut. It was precisely then… when the breath had left Simone's body and she couldn't see for tears… that the alien box in her nylon flight bag began to vibrate, insistent as a doorbell.


	25. 25: Epilogue

Phew! Long one, but pretty much wrapping things up, I think. Thanks, everyone. This story's been a lot of fun for me, and hopefully okay to read.

**25: Epilogue**

_In transit from Kanaho-_

Impelled by hope and longing, Scott Tracy raced across the Pacific to the Ft. Carson/ Cheyenne Mountain disaster site, where rumor had it that many thousands of missing people had suddenly reappeared. There was no cell service to the area, because nearly all of the surrounding towers had been melted to slag, and because every one of those newly-minted survivors was trying to call home. Meanwhile, John and Virgil weren't answering _their _comm or cell phones, and Scott was too nervous to try clicking on Cindy's icon (which he'd never removed from his iPhone).

Scott wasn't at all sure that he'd find an airstrip in any condition for landing, but he flew himself out there, anyhow. He wasn't the sort of man who could sit around waiting for news, and neither was his father, Jeff (already headed home from New York). In fact, the first really useful thing that Scott heard came from his dad, in the form of a text message and internet link.

"_Take a look",_ was all it said. But when Scott (flying with one hand and plenty of cradle-bred instinct) clicked on the hyperlink, he got thirty seconds of a WNN news feed. Thirty seconds of smudged, stubborn, somehow-alive woman, reporting from the brink of hell.

Scott throttled all the way forward then, burning fuel as though he never intended to come back. From time to time, he'd hit that link again, getting another thirty seconds of Cindy's squint-eyed, coughing, wind-whipped report. Then WNN switched to live coverage from the rapidly leaking Moon Station, and there was nothing left but the need to hurry, piling everything his jet had on the altar of speed while he cast a torch with both hands.

A few hours later, Scott _did_ find an airstrip, gliding down past the shattered mountains on nothing but fumes and prayer. He then taxied all the way off the cracked runway, making room for a miles-long queue of military rescue gear. On the ground finally, but in need of a lift, he next caged a ride on a Fort Carson half-track. The driver was a worried young soldier whose fiancé was stationed at Cheyenne Mountain. She understood his situation, and the grunts packed in back did, too. Shifting around, they found a way to make room for Scott Tracy.

The ride was probably not as long as it felt, or as slow, but the going was certainly rough. The roads had mostly vanished, you see, vaporized by lava bombs and earthquake. Inside the cramped half-track, Scott was jostled and bumped by men and equipment, creating a spectacular assortment of oddly-shaped bruises. Even through breath-masks, the air reeked and stung, and he had to shout to be heard. The massive engines roared and whined, shifting pitch on each slope, or when they clattered over a big rock and _whumped!_ to the ground again. Took awhile, but they got there eventually; arriving to find hordes of confused people wandering through a cracked, oozing wasteland of broken rock and hissing steam. Machines, too; some of them living.

The atmosphere swirled with hot currents and bits of ash. Fortunately, a wind had sprung up, blowing most of the fumes away. Help had already begun to arrive from Sky Base and the nearest cities, but the job was a huge one, in isolated, difficult terrain. Every pair of hands, every willing worker, was needed.

Orienting himself from what he'd seen in the WNN news feed (a line of jagged, up-thrust rocks and part of a road) Scott took a med-kit and started walking. Like Virgil at the Golden State Amphitheatre, he stopped several times to help others; a woman and baby who'd "just dropped Sarah off at the bus stop! She was right _there_! I watched her get on!" (They found her at a distant triage tent, after she'd been evacuated from her overturned school bus with 17 other small children.) Next, a taxi driver pinned in his partly-crushed hack, and a couple of old ladies too exhausted and scared to reach help on their own.

In the process, he spotted what could only be a satellite transmission antenna, on a high, telescoping white mast; the sort of thing you might pack in an airplane for live reports from exotic locations. Eyes fixed on the mast, which shook in the wind and sparkled with static, Scott at last found his wife.

Maybe you already know what it is to find something precious that was lost; to see someone you'd feared gone forever. Afterward, Scott couldn't have told you how much distance he covered, or what obstacles lay between them. Only that she turned from a quick gasp at the oxygen tank, saw him, and then they were together, his embrace lifting Cindy clear off her feet. Joy like that is painful; raw and searing as grief. But he hugged her tight against him and said her name many times, while his wife burrowed close, kissing everything she could reach. And absolutely nothing else mattered.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Sky Base, far over head-_

There were multiple fighter squadrons coming in to refuel, while others remained on patrol. The entire base resounded with klaxons and orders, and the guttural thunder of departing transports. Lightning and acid had wreaked havoc with their comm and instruments, rendering Sky Base mostly incommunicado. Needless to say, Colonel White was in no mood to let his strange visitors sneak off in their "thunderbird". After all, he still wasn't sure what that wretched boy had done to his vessel's computer systems, or that the lot of them weren't Mysteron sleepers. Including, quite possibly, the president. But…

"You've got to let us head down there," Virgil told the colonel, speaking for the rest because he didn't stutter, and had far better people skills than John. Didn't help much.

His lordship's chin jutted, and his blue eyes became icy and stern as a magistrate's. In a cool, hard voice, he said,

"Evidently, young man, you labor under some misapprehension as to our relative positions. I have "got" to do nothing at all but escort the lot of you to the World Court in Madrid. Now, if you're _quite_ through, I am wanted on the bridge."

"Colonel," Lady Murasaki cut in, rigid with slighted dignity and honor, "these men and their young comrade are heroes. They have helped to save thousands of lives… my own included… and they have preserved our world from alien attack. _You shall not hinder them."_

Standing there before the conference room's deck-to-ceiling windows (a slight, erect woman trembling with outrage) Murasaki looked like Yuki-Onna, the cold-hearted Lady of Snow. And just like Yuki, she won.

Colonel White smoothed his moustache with the slim, strong fingers of one hand. Then he cleared his throat, saying,

"I see. You will, erm… agree to remain behind as my guest, Madame President?" _And hostage,_ nobody added. They hardly needed to.

Murasaki inclined her head very slightly, losing some of that calm reserve when Fermat dashed over to hug her.

"Can't you just order him to let you go with us, Mrs. Nakamura?" he pled, unwilling to lose Sam's mother, too. She smiled at him.

"Young Fermat, I am honored by your concern, but my place is here, where I can most efficiently orchestrate relief efforts… and where there is tea."

That's how they parted company, Lady Murasaki shaking hands gravely with Virgil, John and Hackenbacker, but giving Fermat a genuine embrace.

"We shall speak again," she promised him, "when time has wound these happenings away like knotted string, and our hearts are eased within us."

Then it was time to go, passing through Sky Base under armed escort, back to their waiting green 'Bird. Getting push-back and takeoff clearance (much less fuel) was another matter, but they won free after not _too_ much more tangled red tape.

Virgil didn't rubber-neck, this time; all he wanted was _out._ Beside him, John was more than usually somber, slumped in the copilot's chair like a man who'd just received an alarming shock… or the final thoughts of a struggling ally, transmitted through that miserable implant. Brains and Fermat, meanwhile, were as impatient to reach Cheyenne Mountain as Scott had been, and for almost the same reason.

Thunderbird 2 descended from Sky Base like a circling hawk; cutting downward through dark, acid clouds to the nightmare below. Fortunately, she could land vertically, negating the need for a long runway. Virgil located a big enough patch of stable ground, and brought her down on three-quarters impeller, giving the giant craft almost neutral buoyancy. She touched down like a leaf, and when the red contact light came on, Virgil turned to his silent older brother, saying,

"John…? You listening?"

The lanky blond astronaut nodded after a moment, so Virgil gave him a smile and plowed on.

"Okay. I'm gonna head out there with Brains and the kid, to see what I can do. You want to stay here and mind the store? Make sure nobody boosts our ride home, and maybe try contacting dad, again?"

"Yeah," his brother replied, almost whispering. "You go ahead."

Virgil hesitated. It was obvious that something was troubling John… But, just as obviously, there wasn't time for counseling that went any deeper than a quick, bracing shoulder clasp. Later, though…

"Right. I'll see you in a few hours, John. I'm not too sure about the comm or phones, but if you have to, send up a flare. We'll head right back."

"Understood," John replied, making an effort to focus. He didn't look well, at all.

First, the rescue team collected air masks and med-kits. Then, once off Thunderbird 2's booming metal ramp and out on the surface, Virgil began questioning people who might have seen Cindy. Brains and Fermat, meanwhile, headed off on a similar mission, looking for one sharp, brilliant crystal in a snow cloud. Their search might have taken hours, had Hackenbacker not reasoned that his physicist wife would be drawn to the biggest phenomenon around; in this case, the scar left behind by that vanished green spear. Being a scientist, she'd want a closer look, Brains felt sure, and so he led their way toward the vast, ragged pit.

It was Fermat who spotted ESU's missing physicists, clambering around near the steaming edge of the hole. They seemed to be poking at something with bits of salvaged metal. (A new element, as it turned out; a dense blue supersolid forged in the first ten-billionth of a second of eruptive force.) Fermat rushed forward, breaking free of his slower father. It had been awhile since he'd seen her, but mom… _his _mom… he'd have known anywhere.

Myrna Loy Bremmerman turned from her investigations at the sound of running footsteps (it had officially been _that_ kind of day). Seeing her son and husband, she smiled, dusted off both hands and managed to pat down her tangled brown hair before they got to her. No use. The resultant three-way scrum messed it all up, again.

Fermat buried his face against his mother's side, hands clutching at the tactile reality of her singed clothing; breathing her bruised-peach scent through fumes and an air mask. Although an ubermensch wouldn't have done so, he couldn't help crying to feel himself wrapped once more in the warm grip of _both_ parents. His mother kissed the boy's forehead, laughed and coughed a little, and then said,

"There, there, Ferms. I'm reasonably fine, for someone who's just experienced a massive, unexplained spacetime disturbance. It's _you_ I'm worried about. To quote Einstein: Your nerves are frayed, and you don't even have a coating of bacon on your head to protect you. Strange man, Einstein. Brilliant, but strange."

Giddy with relief, her collaborator and their epsilon (math-speak for a very small quantity) chuckled. There would be time for explanations later. For now, at the brink of gaping forever, all was well.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Circling overhead in her fighter-_

Simone faced a major decision, alone in that sleek, speeding aircraft. Needing some think time, she'd seized a chance to patrol the disaster zone rather than return at once to Sky Base. A complex task, given that the heavens were rapidly filling with civilian and military relief planes, and there were dozens of darting news 'coptors to block. No more Mysteron craft, though; that was something.

Still in her green nylon flight bag, the alien box maintained an insistent loud buzzing, until Simone took a hand off the flight controls and yanked it free. The noise ceased as soon as she did this, which was good, because a nearby FOX News helijet would _not_ take the hint to depart, and matters were about to turn ugly (as in, thundering fly-by and target-lock ugly).

Several tense minutes passed before the pilot could return her attention to Paul's mysterious "gift", but when she did, Simone got something of a surprise. It had extruded a sort of button, and developed what appeared to be Chinese puzzle-box seams. Greenishly glowing ones. Well, there was no warning printed beside the round button; it wasn't red, or anything… and, besides, she trusted Paul Metcalfe.

So, after a moment's thought, Lieutenant Girardoux… Destiny Angel… faked an instrument problem and banked away from the seething disaster site. No sense being directly atop all of those scared, huddled people, should something go wrong.

Simone cut across what remained of the Rockies and east to the plains, flying high and fast. Once well away from others, she took a deep breath, crossed herself, and then pressed the stiff, oddly-textured button. Instantly, Paul's presence and voice filled her mind, as though he were right there, looking out through her widened blue eyes at Nebraska's flat, speeding patchwork.

_'Simone,'_ he said to her, _'If you're hearing this, then most of my plan somehow __worked__. The crystals have been converted back to their original matter, and I've managed to take Conrad out of the picture. I can't say for sure if that's permanent, though, because I don't know if I'll be able to find someplace deep and destructive enough to finish him off. If I do… __did__… Well, I'm dead, too. Long story short, Simone: this box contains the last bit of green energy left on Earth, and my own personal conversion data. If you choose to open the box, you'll recreate an exact copy of me, circa this recording. Up to you, Simone. Whatever decision you make is the right one. Believe that, and believe that I love you, now and forever.'_

Lieutenant Girardoux's eyes filled with a sudden flood of hot, stinging tears. What, the pilot wondered, ought she to do when love clashed so violently with duty?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_At the Sea Base Gamma medical center, after eight hours of attempted emergency surgery-_

There were unsatisfactory patients, and there was Lieutenant Tracy, presenting with a long, savage gash along his left shoulder, and down the left side of his broad back. The cut had been delivered by a narrow, plastic-wrapped propeller blade, falling with intense, crushing force. The blow had all but bisected the young man's clavicle and scapula, nearly amputating the entire arm.

Worse, the surgical team could find no way to close his wound, which resisted stapling, and only warmed a bit when treated with flesh-welding compounds like Suture-Tex. In the perilous meantime, Gordon Tracy battled their strongest anesthetics, requiring ever higher doses and constant through-the-wound blood transfusions.

Then a surgical nurse suggested the bone laser, which _might_ produce enough power to weld their patient's torn flesh and slashed limb. So, rattling tools were assembled, antiseptic mists sprayed and orders barked, as new personnel descended upon the cold room and glaring lights were brought low and close.

Such a procedure had never been tried before, but the young man would certainly die of blood loss, over-medication or shock if they didn't do _something._ The head of orthopedic surgery himself came to the operating theatre and set to work, adapting familiar techniques on the fly to meet an extraordinary situation. As he explained later in a ground-breaking paper, it had been like treating Achilles… if the infant's mother had dipped him in diluted Styx water, rather than braving the River.

Gordon Tracy (Patient X) was partially invulnerable… to healing, as well as harm. It took WASP exactly 72 hours to relive him of active duty. He was thrust from the service with head-snapping speed and an honorable discharge. "Disabled", as the paperwork put it. No one was surprised (and no inquiries were made) when Mako-1 slipped off on its own, soon afterward.


	26. 26: Epilogue, Part 2

The end, this time for sure! Thanks, Tikatu, ED and Mitzy, for all of your kind reviews.

**26: Epilogue, Part 2**

In the following days, many things happened to alter the world's shaken state. Most of the living machines went into hiding, many with a human friend or two to help provide them with cover. Such partnerships might be found on the NASCAR and boat racing circuits, or out in the wilds of Australia or Alaska, flying the mail; anything mobile that allowed an intelligent machine to hide in plain sight. As a rich boy's souped-up Lear jet, perhaps, or a private recreational sub. One way or another, a few here and a few there, the devices found ways to fit in. Though some, of course, went rogue.

But people have much stranger psyches, and the re-created survivors responded in various ways. Some denied that anything had happened at all, while others studied the phenomenon and formed self-help groups, eventually launching a "New Life" religion around their shared experience.

Having been to the other side, communed there and returned, these New-Lifers held sacrosanct the possibility that somewhere on Earth, on the Moon or Mars there existed a secret cache of green energy, a storehouse of power which might be tapped for their blessings and rituals. A harmless bunch, mostly… although they did have a rather unhealthy fixation with those who'd been recreated "perfectly": Captain Scarlet, Captain Black and certain rumored, sought-for, others.

Thanks to Cindy Taylor-Tracy, events at Cheyenne Mountain had been thoroughly covered and widely broadcast, but the Moon and Mars had no such publicity. _Their_ situation was slower to reach the public. Badly damaged and venting atmosphere, the International Moon Station had had to be evacuated. NASA and the World Government called desperately for volunteers to live and work there, repairing the station under the harshest, most perilous conditions imaginable. Former military and astronaut corps personnel were especially encouraged to apply, and John Tracy certainly wished to do so. Unfortunately, so did his wife, Linda Bennett. In the end, (because neither would back down) they got a coin and flipped for it.

Mars was another story, entirely; an active and dangerous Mysteron colony within striking distance of Earth's fragile blue life-bubble. There were hostile machines in plenty there, mutated animals and a few re-created humans, clustered beneath the seething green haze of a rapidly strengthening Over-mind.

Closer to home, there were other happenings. Earth's magnetic field had begun to experience "anomalies", leading to sudden, violent storms and navigation problems. Maybe, scientists reasoned, something had happened to the core? Perhaps those crystals had damaged it, somehow?

Amid all of this steadily boiling chaos, one young woman searched for… and eventually made… the right decision. Destiny Angel had been torn between duty (dispose of the box, or open it before Colonel White, in a tightly secured location) and love (release Paul Metcalfe at once, trusting that he cared for her and would never do anything wrong). She'd had a bit of time to think, as the box was able to shape-shift like a living machine, evading the notice of scanners. Only _she_ knew what it was, and whose life it contained. Only she recalled Paul's warm voice, scratchy chin and strong arms; the rock-steady love in those clear blue eyes.

Later, there might be rings and "I do" s, but the real union took place one night, when Simone opened the alien box beneath an old footbridge on the River Seine. Moonlight reflected off the water's rippling surface, casting sinuous bands onto the slimy stonework above. There were smells of dankness and mud and vegetation. Noises of distant traffic, slapping waves and ambling passers-by, but Lieutenant Girardoux ignored it all and opened the box.

As for the rest, well… genuine love is its own reward, turning hardship into adventure and making the rest of the world utterly, wonderfully superfluous. After a burst of green light and a soft explosion that fanned her blond hair and left dancing spots in Simone's vision, she flung herself into the arms of her re-created love; there, beneath an ancient stone footbridge, in moonlit northern France.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Tracy Island, on the beach-_

When in doubt, have a cookout. That was Jeff's tried and true strategy, and it had served him well in the past. There was something about grilled meat drenched in grandma's infamous "secret ingredient barbecue sauce", (proudly disqualified from county fairs and church picnics all over Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas) creamy potato salad, beans, beer and sticky desserts that smoothed all the lumps out of Tracy family politics. And with five grown sons, plus his elderly mother, a new wife and child, two daughters-in-law and a toddling grandbaby to deal with, Jeff had a lot of politics on his hands.

Thus, the cookout. Listening to booming surf and Alan's carefully rigged sound system… calling out food-service and tablecloth fastening advice… dipping a brush into that dark, head-clearing sauce and painting rows of fragrantly seared chicken and ribs… Jeff Tracy felt himself relax.

Off at one of the picnic tables, Scott and Cindy were deep in hand-holding conversation, leaning toward each other across red-checkered cloth, whispering about the future. Alan was out in the water, meanwhile, using the last of the day's light to cram in a few minutes' surfing. The day before, Alan had asked his father and mother to sponsor his way into stock-car racing, an expensive and risky proposition. Jeff was officially still considering the matter, and patiently fielding Gennine's panicked phone calls.

Gordon was back home, and on the mend. His shoulder would be scarred for life, probably, though he'd regained much of his mobility (swiftly and eerily so). He and TinTin had spent most of the afternoon together, a fact which Jeff and Kyrano were doing their best to overlook. The girl had been enrolled in a French girls' school and would leave for Paris in three days. Not much could happen in so short a time, could it? Between an injured young veteran and a well brought-up school girl (practically a member of the family)?

TinTin was very solicitous of Gordon, Jeff noticed; bringing him drinks and tidbits and glorying in his company, making light of all the things the former sailor was yet too weak to do. Innocent enough; but just like Kyrano, Jeff failed to notice the ring, which TinTin was wearing on a fine gold chain, close to her heart.

Not far away, Virgil was also entertaining a lady; his blonde little niece, Janie. He'd taken her to play in a shallow tide pool (without her usual playmate, because Ricky was still afraid of the water, and preferred to stay on shore with Penelope). Afterward they'd sat down before a canvas and easel, ostensibly to paint the sunset, but mostly to make a smeary, hand-printed mess that would wind up framed and displayed in the family room. In the meantime, Janie sported a dot of bright pink on her forehead, placed there by her doting uncle.

"Permanent Rose," he'd told her. "One of my favorite paint colors." Like the child, it was beautiful and enduring, and brightened whatever it touched.

As for her parents, as Jeff understood it, John had won an important wager, leaving him with an extremely grumpy wife who required a great deal of making-up to (on the nature of which, Jeff chose not to comment). Long story short, they kept disappearing, and Janie seemed likely to gain a brother or sister, _soon_.

One phone call Jeff was quite happy to receive came from his friend Stavros Valianatos, inviting them all to his June wedding to the lovely Kristal (Carrie Jones, really) on the yacht Amphitrite-2. Smothering a grin, Jeff responded,

"Congratulations! Of course, we'll come, Stavros. What country does the little woman have in mind for a wedding present? Costa Rica? Monaco?"

Valianatos laughed at him, seeming honestly… happy; like a man who'd finally found something he hadn't even realized he was missing.

_"Very funny, Jeff. Believe it or not, Carrie doesn't want presents. She says figure out what you __would__ have spent, and donate the money to your favorite charity, instead. And, no… your own wallet doesn't count."_

Jeff chuckled, slathering the rack of ribs Kyrano had just turned over with an extra-dense coating of sauce. Thank God for hands-free head sets.

"You're a hard man, Stavros… but genuine charity it is." (Did IR count?) "See you in June, with enough spray paint and paper streamers to turn that yacht of yours into a "Just Married" nightmare. Bet I can get Jim to pitch in."

Following the safe return of his son, James Springfield had decided to travel the world with young Christian on a sort of father-son adventure tour. Currently, the raucous pair was hang-gliding in the Andes.

_"I'll have you both strip-searched,"_ Valianatos threatened, laughingly. The conversation ended a few minutes later, with Jeff promising to be there in June, family and friends in tow.

He felt remarkably good. The meat was done to toothsome perfection, so Jeff called the assemblage to order; summoning all five grown sons, his wife and their baby, the bouncing granddaughter, his mother, thorny daughters-in-law, TinTin and Brains. Fermat and Myrna had returned to upstate New York, or they would have been present, too. But it was quite a crowd, anyhow.

Alan parked his dripping surfboard while somebody turned down the music, leaving Jeff with only the sea and wind to shout down. A sprinkling of area lights came on as the sun vanished, bathing them all in a warm, golden glow.

"Dinner's ready," Jeff told them after a moment, "but before we eat, I want to… I just wanted to say that I'm glad everything turned out so well. I'm proud of the courage and strength you've shown so far, and I feel very confident that we're going to make a real difference in the near future. International Rescue may have been my idea to begin with, but you're the ones who brought it to life, and I thank you."

It was Scott… tall and strong in the lamplight… who answered him, saying simply,

"Family sticks together, dad. You need us, we're here. Period. We're also hungry, so... Line forms to the right, people. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghostest, the one who's firstest, eats the mostest. Dig in."

After that, the family fell to with gusto (except for John, who would probably just absorb ambient energy, or something).

They ate, drank and talked far into the night, past the point when two sleepy babies drifted off on their fathers' shoulders. Past the point when a yawning Alan began clearing up, with grandmother's brisk help. Halfway to sunrise, and then some.


End file.
